Weekends like this one explain exactly why Hollywood got so obsessed with franchises, pre-sold content “brands” and the like.

They’re expecting a movie based on the popular but puerile video game “Minecraft” starring Jack Black to open over $60 million in a few weeks.

This weekend, “Novocaine” may have the earmarks of a “graphic novel” and feature the moment when the love interest burbles “You’re a SUPERhero” in all its trailers. But it isn’t. There’s no built-in constituency for Paramount’s “this might hurt a bit” injury-addled action comedy.

And Jack Quaid may be Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid’s kid, but he can’t “open” a picture, not one where Jack Nicholson’s kid (Ray Nicholson) is the villain and Amber Midthunder of “Prey” is the only other “name” attraction on the marquee.

It opens with a hint of charm and settles into heartless and commits the fatal filmic sin of turning boring about midway through its overlong 110 minutes. It earned a few raves among the greener, more easily entertained critic crowd. But mixed reviews overall.

Deadline.com is saying that a $1.75 million Thursday night (I saw it with maybe three other people at a late afternoon suburban showing) and a Friday turnout that almost clear $4 million helped it to an $8.7 million opening weekend.

Advertised and hyped to death for months, it’s not the picture that ends theatrical moviegoing’s malaise. When the horror crowd is largely staying home, when the lone comic book picture opens big and falls off big, you have to wonder if the moviegoing habit itself is broken.

“Mickey 17” opened weak — $19 million last weekend — which considering its $125 million or so sci-fi book-adaptation budget, is bad news for the WB’s bottom line. Not a comic book or otherwise truly proven “intellectual property,” it’s not worth the studio’s risk. A dazzling-looking, modestly entertaining “Watch RPatts die and die again” satiric comedy, it managed another $7.5 or so million this weekend.

It’s better than “Novocaine,” but you can’t guilt filmgoers into seeing something ambitious and smart.

The one new movie opening in single digits that could expect that modest a turnout is “Black Bag,” a John le Carre-esque spy thriller from Steven Soderbergh and screenwriter David Koepp. It opened on over 2000 screens, and is getting raptorous reviews (best film of the new year so far, by far) and it tied “Mickey 17” with a $7.5 million opening (it jumped off to a Thursday/Friday of $2.75). .

It skews more “adult,” and with Cate Blanchett, Michael Fassbender, Naomie Harris and Pierce Brosnan as the leads, it may draw well enough once that more mature audience finds it. But no, you don’t HAVE to see it on “the Big Screen.”

Speaking of “brands,” the Looney Tunes brand hasn’t had a lot of magic attached to it in decades, not since Chuck Jones died, in any event, not since TV brought back several new and often inferior incarnations of the characters in assorted series.

So a new Looney Tunes all-star animated comedy that sounds like a headline from today’s news — “The Day the Earth Blew Up” — isn’t convincing families to show up. Yet. It did $3.2 million and cracked the top five in an AWFUL weekend, overall.

Animated films don’t do their business until Sat. and Sunday, and Deadline and Box Office Guru and others historically underestimate that “family film” audience. Still, Ketchup Entertainnment is hardly Warner Brothers, or Disney or Dreamworks, so visibility on this one is weak and $3.2 is about all Bugs & Daffy’s photocopies could expect.

A low-budget faith-based film titled “The Last Supper” ($2.85 million) was smuggled into cinemas and will crack the top ten.

And A24’s “Opus,” which presents John Malkovich as a reclusive, aged pop star who tests the limits of “cultish” devotion in releasing new music to a select few will only manage $1.5. Reviews have been…underwhelming.

“Captain America: Brave New World” — which will end its run short of the $200 million mark — stayed in the top five for one more week. And “Paddington in Peru” ($2.775 folded into $40 million and counting) drops out of that top five, but seems to have the legs to get to $50 million in North America.