Merry Christmas. Kind of. The holiday falls on a Wednesday this year, which is the worst day for it as far as Hollywood is concerned, as it means you can’t really have a “Christmas weekend” so to speak. Many people are holding out on going to the movies as they wrap up their seasonal shopping. For newcomers, it’s all about the endgame, with the lucrative week between Christmas and New Year’s being where the real money lies.
That said, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is finding itself in a very good place. While I firmly believe it could have opened higher on another weekend (Sonic the Hedgehog 2 sped to $70 million in the spring), $62 million is an extremely healthy start. You gotta hand it to Paramount: they know how to hype up a good film when they have one. It may not always pay off (sorry, Transformers One), but having confidence in what you’re selling is never a bad thing.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was marketed as an epic action-packed event film, and apparently it delivered just that going by the reviews, which are the best ever for a video game film with a current RT score of 86% “fresh.” We’ve come a long way since the internet collectively rolled its eyes over that infamous teaser trailer for the first movie!
Meanwhile, Mufasa: The Lion King isn’t quite roaring with a softer-than-expected opening of $35 million, but I’m not ready to write its obituary just yet. As I said, the real moolah comes after the holiday, and this wasn’t ever going to come anywhere close to the $190 million debut of the 2019 flick. So I can’t label it a “failure” at this time.
For whatever reason, Deadline committed almost their entire box office report this week to Mufasa, claiming that Disney should have gone all out by bringing Elton John back for the soundtrack (which was never going to happen) and having Jeffery Katzenberg aboard as executive producer (which was really never going to happen). They also cite Robert Benigni’s Pinocchio as an example of live-action fairy tales not doing well, which objectively isn’t true when you consider how massive that was in its native country of Italy. But I digress.
Believe it or not, we have another movie this weekend with something called Homestead, which I had never heard of before now. Go figure it’s an Angel Studios release, and I guess there must have been an audience for it since it opened to $6 million, which is more than a movie with “Lord of the Rings” in its title was able to manage last week. Huh.
Anyway, the top ten, via Deadline
- Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Par) 3,761 theaters, Fri $25.75M Sat $19.5M Sun $16.7M 3-day $62M/Wk 1
- Mufasa (Dis) 4,100 theaters Fri $13.3M Sat $11.8M Sun $9.9M 3-day $35M/Wk 1
- Wicked (Uni) 3,296 (-393) theaters, Fri $3.7M (-36%) Sat $5.1M Sun $4.57M 3-day $13.5M (-40%),Total $383.9M/Wk 5
- Moana 2 (Dis) 3600 (-400) theaters, Fri $3.3M (-45%) Sat $5M Sun $4.8M 3-day$13.1M (-50%), Total $359M/Wk 4
- Homestead (Angel) 1,886 theaters, Fri $2.9M Sat $1.6M Sun $1.5M 3-day $6M/Wk 1
- Gladiator 2 (Par) 2,397 (-827) theaters, Fri $1.25M (-43%) Sat $1.72M Sun $1.48M 3-day $4.45M (-42%) Total $153.9M/Wk 5
- Kraven the Hunter (Sony) 3,211 theaters, Fri $880K (-82%) Sat $1.2M Sun $1M 3-day $3.1M (-72%) Total $17.4M/Wk 2
- Red One (AMZ) 2002 (-1001) theaters, Fri $416K (-66%) Sat $566K Sun $453K 3-day$1.43M (-66%), Total $95.4M/Wk 6
- Lord of the Rings..Rohirrim (WB) 2,602 theaters, Fri $350K (-83%), 3-day $1.2M(-72%), Total $7.3M/Wk 2
- Best Christmas Pageant Ever (LG) 861 (-658) theaters, Fri $240K (-37%) Sat $300K Sun $285K 3-day $825K (-36%) Total $38.4M/Wk 7