Tron: Ares easily sped to the front of the box office race this weekend, but its $33.5 million domestic haul and $60.5 million globally (per Comscore) don't signal a rewarding run ahead.

The sci-fi threequel from Pirates of the Caribbean franchise director Joachim Rønning, which features an impressively stacked ensemble cast including Jared Leto, Greta Lee, Jodie-Turner Smith, Gillian Anderson, and Jeff Bridges, more than tripled the earnings of the next-best performing film on the domestic charts this weekend. But while Roofman scooped up a mere $8 million, that's against an estimated $17 million–19 million budget, as opposed to Tron's $180 million.

Globally, Tron's $60 million, representing a third of the overall budget, stops this opening performance from being labeled an all-out disaster. But it's established practice for studios like Tron's backer, Disney, to exclude marketing and promotion costs from the total budgetary tally. That means that $180 number could easily exceed $220 million when the film's publicity bonanza is taken into account, putting the finish line of financial solvency increasingly out of reach.

In third place on the domestic leaderboard this weekend and second globally is One Battle After Another, which added $6.6 million to its domestic coffers ($54.5 million overall) and another $21.6 million globally ($158 million overall). The latest from Paul Thomas Anderson bore striking similarities to Tron two weeks ago, when it opened to $22.4 million on an estimated $130 million budget. The operative differences between Tron and Battle make all the difference, however, marking Tron for potential failure and already declaring Battle a success.

The former is designed as big budget, big screen, profit-generating blockbuster, while the latter is a three-hour absurdist spin on domestic political anxieties for the arthouse crowd that was adapted from one of postmodern master Thomas Pynchon's lesser-known gems. One Battle After Another wasn't supposed to perform this well, in other words, and Tron: Ares was supposed to perform better.

Taylor Swift storms the box office with unprecedented 'Life of a Showgirl' album release event

'Tron: Ares' star Greta Lee can't believe Soojin from 'Girls' gets to ride Lightcycle (exclusive)

Elsewhere on the domestic and global charts this weekend is Dreamworks' fantasy musical Gabby's Dollhouse: The Movie, a feature length follow-up to the acclaimed Netflix series, which earned $3.3 million domestically in the No. 4 spot and $10.5 million globally at No. 3.

On the premieres front, Soul on Fire, William H. Macy's biopic of a man who survived a fire that charred his entire body, took the No. 5 spot domestically with $3 million. This past weekend saw several more modestly scaled indies open and do modest business, including A24's If I Had Legs I'd Kick You, a brilliant vehicle for star Rose Byrne which earned just over $100K on a handful of screens in New York and Los Angeles. Luca Guadagnino's cancel culture thriller After The Hunt similarly grossed $154,467 on a six-screen limited release, for a strong per-theater-average of roughly $25K.

Sign up for Entertainment Weekly's free daily newsletter to get breaking TV news, exclusive first looks, recaps, reviews, interviews with your favorite stars, and more.

It is not looking great for another, more experimental new premiere. Jennifer Lopez and Bill Condon's operatic reimagining of Kiss of the Spider Woman had a disastrous opening of just $918K, despite being the beneficiary of a decent publicity blitz and opening on more than 1,300 screens nationwide (for comparison to Guadagnino, that's a per-theater-average of just $691). The film has, however, earned rave reviews, particularly where Lopez is concerned, placing her right alongside Byrne in early Oscar talk.

Next week sees the release of several contenders for the throne. At the head of the pack is Black Phone 2, the follow-up to the 2022 horror hit starring Ethan Hawke in an unexpectedly delicious villain role and directed by genre veteran Scott Derrickson.

There's also Good Fortune, the spiritual fantasy farce starring the ensemble of Sandra Oh, Seth Rogen, Aziz Ansari, Keke Palmer, and Keanu Reeves. Finally, Harris Dickinson makes his directorial debut with Urchin, which tells a story of redemption on the rugged streets of London, and The Mastermind, the intriguing new caper from American master director Kelly Reichardt.