Friday Box Office Estimates Archive for December, 2017
Friday Box Office Estimates
Star Wars: The Last Jedi becomes the second fastest release to pass $500 million domestic today, ahead of Jurassic World and showing no signs of negative drag, aside from not matching the phenomenal opening of The Force Awakens, the first Star Wars movie in a decade. Jumanji: Welcome To The Jungle is living up to box office expectations, heading to over $175 million domestic through the holiday, making it the biggest non-F&F Dwayne Johnson movie ever. Things are less happy after these two, with Pitch Perfect 3, The Greatest Showman, Ferdinand, All The Money In The World, Darkest Hour, and Downsizing are all underperforming even modest hopes.
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The arrival of five, count ’em, five wide releases looking to take advantage of the Christmas window with one more landing on Christmas Day means… well… there are two more wide releases than last year in this window, and in limited releases meant to go wide, one fewer than last year’s five. So as the marketplace shows that people are willing to go see movies they are interested in on virtually any date, the industry keeps packing them into the traditional windows. Theatrical isn’t in trouble… but myopia causes problems, even on the holiday weekend. It’s not that the market can’t expand to allow for multiple big hits. It’s that the messaging is getting so thin with so many titles in play at one time, it can’t get an attentive foothold to propel bigger numbers.
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In what should not be a shocker, Star Wars: Episode 8 The Next Of Many did not have the explosive launch that Star Wars: Episode Seven – The First In a Decade. Still, the best December opening ever – aside from the aforementioned last Star Wars Mainframe – and a 30%+ bump from Rogue One, aka, the first offshoot episode. We know that Empire did a third less than Star Wars, right? Let’s not be surprised and horrified if The Last Jedi grosses only $600 million domestic, making it the sixth biggest domestic grosser of all-time. Attempting to counterprogram, Fox released a Blue Sky animated movie that will skew young, Ferdinand, to a brutal level of disinterest. The irony of the two openers this weekend is, also, brutal.
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A second consecutive abandoned weekend by the majors. Broad Green tries to take advantage of the hole by quietly rolling out Just Getting Started as the only wide release, but can’t come close to numbers that majors saw as failing when they opened this date in years past (including last year’s Office Christmas Party, which opened to $16.9m). As a result, soft drops across the board for holdovers and room for expanding awards hopefuls. The big winner is The Disaster Artist, which had a strong launch last weekend on 19 screens and expanded to 840 this weekend with a $6 million-plus weekend coming. Lady Bird passes $20 million today. And I, Tonya launches with a likely $70k-ish per-screen on four.
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On one of the weeks that’s a Hollywood dead zone, no new wide releases. The story, aside from the ongoing deterioration of Justice League, is the small pictures, most of which have awards ambitions. A24’s The Disaster Artist leads the pack with $26,000 per screen on 19 in its debut. That’s about what Lady Bird started with, but on 19 screens instead of four. Impressive, though on a quicker burn. Searchlight’s The Shape of Water also debuts at roughly the same per-screen, but on two. Wonder Wheel is looking at a per-screen in the 20s in a five-screen debut. Three Billboards more than doubles its screen count, leaping to 1,430 screens, while Lady Bird expands to 1,194, with the films neck-and-neck for the weekend.
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