November starts off strong with a $109M weekend headlined by the new release from Disney’s Marvel Studios: Eternals. The star-studded superhero movie and third entry in Marvel’s “Phase Four” landed a $71M debut – the fourth highest open of the year behind Venom, Black Widow, and Shang-Chi. While coming to the theater was a no-brainer for the loyal MCU fanbase, those outside the bubble may have hesitated due to the “rotten” rating on RottenTomatoes. Also, the Eternalsbrand does not hold the same weight or awareness as the other, more popular, Marvel characters. 

Still, audiences have been much kinder to film (81% on Rotten Tomatoes, B on CinemaScore).The consensus rounds out to “It’s a different kind of Marvel movie, but Eternals still contains all the action, humor, and heart that fans are looking for”. For reference, Shang-Chi – also featuring a lesser-known character – rose to $223M to-date with overwhelming positive buzz (before it goes to Disney Plus this Friday). Eternals has the next couple of weekends largely to itself and an “okay” rating, so it should see the domestic total rise over $100M. 

Tracking behind Eternals were October’s top-titles: Dune, No Time to Die, and Venom: Let There Be Carnage. Each one saw really good holdovers versus the weekend prior, showing what positive word-of-mouth and walk-ups do for a movie’s box-office. Now in its third weekend, Dune’s box-office dropped just 51% from last weekend. No Time To Die (which is going to PVOD this week) and Venom had drops of around 20% each. That’s despite a major blockbuster like Eternals taking up real estate when it launched.

The beauty of cinema is that there is something that appeals to everyone. Theaters are now back to having more than one or two “fresh” products on display. Sure, Eternals may not have appealed to families with younger kids – being over two hours long – but those same families made the trip to theaters for movies like Ron’s Gone Wrong. The film dropped just 3.8% from last weekend in box-office gross. 

Elsewhere, we had another new release in theaters this weekend: Neon’s Spencer. The Princess Diana bio-drama scored $2.1M from just under 1,000 theaters. Starring Kristen Stewart, the studio is hoping Spencer builds momentum throughout the awards season – much like the other specialty title in theaters, The French Dispatch. After expanding the number of theaters, the Wes Anderson film picked up another $2.6M – just like it did the weekend prior.

Up next, we have Paramount’s Clifford the Big Red Dog coming to theaters this Wednesday 11/10, and Focus Features’ Belfast on Friday 11/12.