Dog Man has won the weekend with a record haul, but Companion is also doing very well. Dog Man, which is a spinoff of the 2017 movie Captain Underpants based on the Dav Pilkey graphic novel series of the same name, is the 50th feature film released by DreamWorks Animation. The Companion release kicked off on the same day, with the R-rated horror film starring Sophie Thatcher, Jack Quaid, Lukas Gage, and Harvey Guillén targeting a very different audience.
Per ᴅᴇᴀᴅline, as of Saturday morning, Dog Man is projected to take in a 3-day debut gross of $35 million at the domestic box office, landing it at No. 1 on the chart for the weekend. This will give it the second-best opening weekend for a January animated release behind 2016’s Kung Fu Panda 3 ($41.8 million), which is also a DreamWorks тιтle. It is the company’s third No. 1 debut in a row after Kung Fu Panda 4 and The Wild Robot and their 26th overall.
While Companion is tracking much further behind with a 3-day total landing it at No. 2 in a range between $8 and $10 million, this is a solid kickoff for the horror movie, which was produced by Barbarian writer-director Zach Cregger. It only cost $10 million to make, so by the end of the weekend it may have already earned back its budget.
What This Means For Companion And Dog Man
Both Movies Have Bright Futures
The Dog Man release is performing at roughly the same level as Companion, because the movie comes with a budget of $40 million, a total to which its domestic debut has already drawn very close. Thus, both movies are seemingly on track to perform well at the box office, even though movies need to do more than just earn back their budget. Theaters generally keep half of ticket sales and publicity costs are not included in production budgets, so movies typically need to earn back two and a half times their price tags in order to break even in theaters.
This is the first weekend of the year where both the No. 1 and No. 2 movies have been 2025 releases.
By this rule of thumb, Dog Man‘s break-even point can be estimated to be somewhere around $100 million, while the horror movie likely needs to earn about $25 million. Their debuts get them a great deal of the way there already, and audience reactions have shown that both are likely to build strong word of mouth and keep climbing. Companion reviews have seen it earn a 90% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing to match its Certified Fresh 93% critic score, while Dog Man has earned a similarly strong user rating of 88%.
Our Take On The Weekend Box Office
2025 тιтles Are Finally Dominating
While the Mufasa: The Lion King release is still holding strong in the Top 5 and could continue to do so, the success of Companion and Dog Man on the chart, as well as 2025 releases in general, show that it is only a matter of time before no 2024 holdovers show up in the Top 5 at all. This could potentially happen as early as February 14, which sees the North American debut of Paddington in Peru hit theaters opposite the new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie Captain America: Brave New World.
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Source: ᴅᴇᴀᴅline
