Good thing “Novocaine” can’t feel pain, because this one hurts. Paramount’s “Novocaine” hit No. 1 at the domestic box office this weekend despite grossing just $8.7 million. That’s the lowest total for a movie to top the box office this year in a given weekend, and it led a dismally weak weekend on the whole at the domestic box office, in which the Top 10 earned just a cumulative $45.2 million, the worst of 2025 thus far.

It will come as a surprise to no one that the box office has been bleak since the pandemic, but you don’t even have to go back that far to find a weekend that had a worse No. 1. For that we look to February 9-11 2024 when the No. 1 movie in America was Universal’s “Argylle” in its second weekend in theaters, earning just $6.2 million. The biggest new release that weekend was Focus Features’ “Lisa Frankenstein,” which bombed to $3.6 million and yet was No. 2 for the weekend.