Movies

Audiences are Kraven More Moana and Wicked — Weekend Box Office Report for December 13th-December 15th 2024

It may be the middle of December, but people are still feasting on Thanksgiving leftovers.

Our number one movie—yet again—is Moana 2 with $26 million, but Wicked: Part One is sneaking up on it with $22 million in its fourth weekend. Remember that the Moana sequel began life as a straight-to-streaming affair before Disney bumped up the budget for a theatrical run, and Universal made the controversial choice to split Wicked into two parts. Yay for corporate decisions paying off? (Also, no, Wicked: Part One didn’t need to be any longer, no matter what musical theatre Twitter tells you).

Next weekend, Moana should take a dive as Sonic the Hedgehog 3 and Mufasa: The Lion King enter the arena, but it’s crazy that the Christmas season is ultimately going to be dominated by four PG-rated outings. In other words, there will be plenty of money to go around, even if I can safely say that Moana 2 isn’t going to come anywhere close to the final tally of Frozen II, which is Disney Feature Animation’s current box office champion.

No joke she is probably the most pointless Disney character ever and she can get lost.

As for our new openers, they…aren’t. The long-delayed Kraven the Hunter failed to make a killing with a take of just $11 million. Contrary to popular belief, Morbius actually opened quite well for what it was (before losing all of its blood the following week), while Madame Web was dead the instant everyone saw its terrible trailer. The worse news is Kraven was more expensive than any of those films with a reported budget of $110 million, which is probably why Sony attempted to soften the blow by “leaking” that they were done with non-Spider-Man Spider-Man spin-offs without Spider-Man earlier this week.

I’ll admit it: I thought that the marketing for Kraven was solid enough that it might have had a chance of becoming a dark horse, but Sony seemed pretty content with just throwing this one away. Sadly that sentiment can also be applied to The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Where was the marketing for this? Supposedly Warner Bros. only produced this to keep the theatrical rights to the franchise, but that doesn’t excuse the fact that most people simply didn’t know this was playing. As things stand, it is anything but precious with an opening of just $4 million. Ugh.

This is a real review headline and I’m so confused.

If we’re being fair (or cynical, depending on how you read it), a “Lord of the Rings anime” is kind of a niche idea regardless of how cool it sounds on paper, and the trailer failed to really give it a solid pitch to general audiences. “Long ago, before most of the characters you cared about, there was this old king, and he has a daughter who Tolkien didn’t even bother to name who is the main focus here, because girl power.” (On that note, Deadline framed this weekend’s box office report as a “battle of the sexes” and…yeah, maybe don’t?). Granted, I thought the animation looked cool, but you would be forgiven if you assumed this was a straight-to-disc release as WB had it produced at their television animation division to keep the cost down. No one is going to lose sleep over this flopping, for better or worse.

Anyway, the top ten, via Deadline

  1. Moana 2 (Dis) 4000 (-200) theaters, Fri$6M (-48%) Sat $12.1M Sun $8.5M 3-day $26.6M (-48%), Total $337.5M/Wk 3
  2. Wicked (Uni) 3,689 (-196) theaters, Fri $5.8M (-39%) Sat $9.4M Sun $7.2M 3-day $22.5M (-38%),Total $359M/Wk 4
  3. Kraven the Hunter (Sony) 3,211 theaters, Fri $4.7M, Sat $3.7M Sun $2.4M 3-day $11M/Wk 1
  4. Gladiator 2 (Par) 3,224 (-216) theaters, Fri $2.1M (-40%) Sat $3.3M Sun $2.2M 3-day $7.8M (-38%) Total $145.9M/Wk 4
  5. Lord of the Rings..Rohirrim (WB) 2,602 theaters, Fri $2M Sat $1.47M Sun $1.1M 3-day $4.6M/Wk 1
  6. Red One (AMZ) 3003 (-147) theaters, Fri $1.2M (-29%) Sat $1.9M Sun $1.3M 3-day$4.4M (-36%), Total $92.6M/Wk 5
  7. Interstellar (re) 321 (+156) theaters, Fri $990K (-28%) Sat $1.3M Sun $995K 3-day$3.315M (-28%)/Total $11.7M/Wk 2
  8. Pushpa 2: The Rule (Prath) 631 (-641) theaters, Fri $460K (-71%) Sat $694K Sun $446K 3-day $1.6M (-67%), Total $13M/Wk 2
  9. Best Christmas Pageant Ever (LG) 1,519 (-114) theaters, Fri $390K Sat $555K Sun $405K, 3-day $1.35M (-10%) Total $36.6M/Wk 6
  10. Queer (A24) 460 (+413) theaters, Fri $282KSat $267K Sun $241K 3-day $791K (+95%), Total $1.9M/Wk 3