‘Spider-Man’ Call Home — Theaters Need You Stat

Weak Thanksgiving holdovers? Absence of new titles? Uptick in Covid concerns? Confusion over home availability? Name your poison, and it still might not include the scariest possibility — that interest in moviegoing has taken a permanent hit from which it may never recover.At $12.7 million, “Encanto” (Disney) led a weekend when all films combined could only manage around a $51 million total.

This year’s animated release from the studio dropped 53 percent, within range of the post-holiday second weekend for similar titles.But the drop came from a low-end start.

Some context for the rut theaters are in: Two years ago, weekend three of “Frozen II” (which opened a week earlier) did $35 million, almost three times as much as “Encanto.” While nobody expected the Colombia-set animated film (with songs by Lin-Manuel Miranda) to perform at that sequel’s level, the shortfall is indicative of theatrical weakness — in this case, exacerbated by anticipation

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