New Mutants Has Biggest Opening Day At Box Office Since Pandemic Shutdown

While theaters aren’t open everywhere just yet, some areas of the country do have a new movie to watch on the big screen courtesy of Marvel’s New Mutants. Theaters have been shut down in the states since mid-March, and since this is the first new film to really screen at multiple theaters, the release of New Mutants has created the biggest opening day at the box office since the pandemic began. New Mutants brought in $3.1 million on Friday, and that was without theaters in New York or Los Angeles, as those locations are not yet open. As of this morning expectations for the film after its first weekend are sitting between $7 and $8 million, though it’s unclear what Disney will do with it after opening weekend.

Reviews have not been kind to the long-delayed film, and currently, the film holds a 24% critics rating on Rotten Tomatoes, though the Audience Score is higher at 57%.

That’s pretty low, and ComicBook.com’s Charlie Ridgely agreed with that sentiment in his review of the film, which you can read an excerpt from below. The full review can be found here.

“Whether it’s because The New Mutants didn’t really have a normal post-production process, or because the movie was just subpar to begin with, nothing about the enticing idea is fleshed out in the final product,” Ridgely wrote. “It’s a slow-moving chore of a film for the first 45 minutes or so, using weak dialogue to attempt setting up a compelling conflict between characters. We’ve seen catty teenagers snap at each other before, often times with way better insults, so the game here is nothing new.”

It seems the film was contractually obligated to release in theaters first before it could hit on-demand services, but after this weekend that requirement will be satisfied (unless there is a specific window in the contract). That means if they wanted Disney could move the film over to Disney+ to capitalize on the hype around it, even if most of that hype is simply curiosity at this point, but we’ll have to wait and see.

You can find the official description for The New Mutants below.

“20th Century Studios in association with Marvel Entertainment presents The New Mutants, an original horror thriller set in an isolated hospital where a group of young mutants is being held for psychiatric monitoring. When strange occurrences begin to take place, both their new mutant abilities and their friendships will be tested as they battle to try and make it out alive.”

The New Mutants is in theaters now.