'Morbius' Leads At Weekend Box Office With $40.8M

Moviegoers took a bite out of Sony Pictures’ SONY vampire action film “Morbius,” which topped the U.S. weekend box office with $40.8 million in ticket sales from 4,268 theaters.

What Happened: Jared Leto starred in the title role of the Marvel Cinematic Universe character whose treatment for a rare blood disorder results in a slightly problematic side effect – he turns into a vampire. “Morbius” is technically not part of the MCU despite having a character from that realm on the screen, and its opening weekend is softer than the other official MCU titles.

Still, “Morbius” outpaced other films at the domestic box office. Paramount’s PARAA “The Lost City,” which topped last weekend’s box office chart, placed second with $14.6 million from 4,253 theaters. “The Batman” from AT&T's T Warner Bros. unit, which held the top box office spot for the three weeks before “The Lost City” opened, placed third this weekend with $11.2 million from 3,732 screens.

Rounding out the top five films in release were Sony’s “Uncharted,” with $3.7 million from 3,064 theaters, and the Crunchyroll / Funimation anime feature “Jujutsu Kaisen 0” with $1.96 million from 2,070 venues.

What Happens Next: Two highly anticipated films opening this weekend will be vying against “Morbius” for the top-ranking berth at the box office.

Action-oriented filmmaker Michael Bay is back in his element with “Ambulance,” a slam-bang thriller about two brothers who rob a bank and hijack an ambulance with an EMT and a dying police officer. Jake Gyllenhaal and Yahya Abdul-Mateen II star in this film from Comcast Corporation’s CMCSA Universal Pictures.

An action film mixing comedy and CGI animation is Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” a follow-up to the 2020 feature. James Marsden and Jim Carrey lead the human cast, while Ben Schwartz voices Sonic and Idris Elba voices Knuckles the Echidna.

Also opening is “All the Old Knives,” with Chris Pine as a CIA operative seeking the truth about an intelligence leak that cost the deaths of more than 100 airplane passengers. Thandiwe Newton, Laurence Fishburne and Jonathan Pryce co-star in this thriller, which will have a limited theatrical distribution via United Artists Releasing and a simultaneous online premiere with Amazon AMZN Prime Video.

Other new films opening this weekend include Saban Films' spy thriller "Agent Games" starring Dermot Mulroney and Mel Gibson; Samuel Goldwyn Films’s drama with music “Aline,” which is very loosely inspired by the life of Celine Dion; and IFC Films’ “Cow,” a documentary on the life of an English dairy cow.

Also Happening: In 1995, Texas-born writer Philip Stark arrived in Hollywood and found work on a new animated television show called “South Park.” His cred as a writer quickly grew, and he was recruited to write the sitcom “That 70s Show,” and during this time he sold the screenplay for a feature film comedy “Dude, Where’s My Car?” and recommended an actor from the sitcom, Ashton Kutcher, for the film.

The 2000 release of “Dude, Where’s My Car?” should have been the stepping-stone for Stark. But in a new interview with Los Angeles Magazine, Stark recalled that his career stagnated.

“The opportunities got fewer and further between,” he said. “I became less happy with simply developing, meaning sitting at home writing a script and hoping somebody would buy it.”

Stark stayed in Hollywood, but never found the greater recognition that he hoped to achieve. He eventually decided to change careers, enrolling in California’s Antioch University in 2018 and graduating two years with a master’s degree in clinical psychology. He is currently in training at the Southern California Counseling Center as an associate marriage and family therapist and recently self-published the book “Dude, Where’s My Car-tharsis?”, which he described as “a guide to talk therapy.”

As for his crowning achievement, all we can say is, “Dude! Sweet!”

Photo: Jared Leto in "Morbius," courtesy of Sony Pictures.