Jack Quaid’s action-comedy “ Novocaine ” topped a painfully slow weekend at the box office with $8.7 million. For theater owners, however, there’s not too much to celebrate: It’s one of the worst debuts to still capture the No. 1 spot (at least since the pandemic ground moviegoing to a halt).

March 2025 was never going to be huge at the domestic box office. While this time last year saw the movie release calendar populated with titles including Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part Two, Mike Mitchell's Kung Fu Panda 4,

Novocaine could have been written by a 12-year-old, and I’m not sure I mean that pejoratively. It’s a riff on superhero stories, but it’s been thought up with a whiff of dopey plausibility: The film’s protagonist,