Can 'Clifford' Best 'Eternals' at the Box Office This Weekend?

It's hard to beat a Marvel movie at the box office these days, but if any Marvel movie can be beaten, it's Eternals. The latest franchise installment has had the most negative reaction, both from critics and audiences, of any movie in the MCU. So the live-action/CGI version of the children's book series Clifford the Big Red Dog could have a chance at challenging for the top spot in theaters this weekend. Read on for details.

Via Box Office Mojo.

Marvel’s Eternals dominated at the box office last weekend, opening to $71.3 million and making up 65% of the entire weekend box office, bringing the overall box office back above $100 million after two frames of falling short. While October had three weekends in a row where the box office stayed above $100 million, November is looking more like the somewhat front-loaded July which, despite some solid openings, never crossed $100 million in a weekend after Black Widow’s July 9-11 opening.

With no major competition, Eternals is looking at another number one weekend even if it has a big drop. While the Chloé Zhao directed film’s mixed reviews (47% on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest in the franchise by a large margin) may not have hurt its opening weekend box office, the less than stellar word-of-mouth, as indicated by the film’s B CinemaScore (also the lowest in the franchise), is likely to hinder the film’s legs. The box-office performances of Shang-Chi, which has roughly tripled its opening weekend gross, and Doctor Strange, which opened to $85 million in the same early November slot in 2017 and had a multiplier of 2.7, seem like a long shot for Eternals, but this weekend will give us an idea of where it ends up.

A better comp for Eternals is Black Widow, which dropped 68% in its second weekend and had a multiplier of around 2.3. Of course, Black Widow had the caveat of being released on Disney+, so a drop of that size may make Eternals look like a disappointment compared to other MCU films. However, its opening weekend is the fourth best since the start of the pandemic, and its overseas performance is strong, with openings above Shang-Chi in many major markets, and $171 million already in the bank worldwide.

Coming in at number two this weekend should be Clifford the Big Red Dog, the first live-action film based on the popular children’s book series. Walt Becker (Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip) directs the kid’s flick which stars Jack Whitehall, Darby Camp, Tony Hale, Sienna Guillory, John Cleese, and Kenan Thompson, not to mention its computer generated big red dog. Clifford opened Wednesday on 3,600 screens, grossing $2.3 million, and it hopes to catch the many kids who have school off this Veterans Day.

Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.