One Love Could Be the First $100 Million Movie of 2024

Four years of writing about domestic box office during “a challenging period” makes it tempting to go with the glass half-full view (and even more). This weekend, Paramount’s “Bob Marley: One Love” provides the necessary evidence with an estimated $49 million gross by Monday, six days into its Valentine’s Day opening run. Its three-day total is about $27.7 million.

That’s a terrific performance against a $70 million production cost, and it’s an original biopic. Despite a depressed marketplace, there’s an audience for mainstream movies that can make a profit. “Bob Marley” showed a strong cross-demographic draw, female slightly ahead of male, among all ages and ethnic groups. Reviews were not good (43 Metacritic), but it has an A Cinemascore and two weeks with little competition. It could become the first domestic $100-million grossing film of 2024.

There’s also compelling evidence for a glass half empty (or worse). The estimate for this three-day weekend is around $77 million. That’s 47 percent lower than this holiday Friday to Sunday last year as year-to-date now trails 2023 by about 15 percent.

And then there’s “Madame Web” (Sony), a low-budget superhero movie ($80 million qualifies as such) that opened to $23 million for its first five days. Like the more-expensive “Argylle” (Amazon bought the project for $200 million, with Universal releasing…