Weekend Box Office: Batman v Superman Stumbles, Remains Number One

As expected Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice had a difficult second weekend, as poor word-of-mouth overcame opening-weekend excitement. The movie's estimated 68% drop in ticket sales compared to last weekend would be the fifth-largest drop for any film that opened with over $100 million. On the bright side, however, is that the superhero film still took in enough - an estimated $52 million - to more than double the take of the second-place movie, Zootopia. Batman v Superman's total domestic gross should surpass its $250-million production budget by the end of the weekend, but the film still has over a hundred million dollars in marketing expenses to recoup.

It helped a lot that Batman v Superman had no heavyweight competition at all this weekend. The week's other two new releases performed modestly, with one of them, God's Not Dead 2, barely edging into the top five and the other, Meet the Blacks, struggling to make the top 10.

Of the two new movies, God's Not Dead 2 is the most disappointing performer. Its $8-million gross is well behind that of its predecessor despite the fact that the sequel opened in more than three times as many theaters as the original film did. Meet the Blacks didn't impress anyone, either, but expectations for the horror parody were low to begin with, making its $4-million gross look like something better than total disaster.