As I predicted last weekend, there was no change in the Top Five in terms of position, but each movie dropped in its revenue. Disney/Pixar’s champ ‘Coco’ holds steady at #1, taking in an additional $26.1 million. The film may have been bolstered a bit by its recent wins for best animated film from the New York Film Critics Circle and National Board of Review… but probably not. This isn’t the sort of movie that needs awards to drive ticket sales. What ‘Coco’ has working for it are glowing reactions from both critics and average filmgoers.
‘Coco’ is trailing behind last year’s ‘Moana’ but only by a measly 9%. Overall, however, this post-Thanksgiving weekend was up, over last year by 9.4% and is the top post-Thanksgiving weekend in five years.
‘Justice League’ is holding stronger than last year’s ‘Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them’. Warner Brothers’ superhero mashup made an additional $16.58M. At this point, it appears that ‘Justice League’ will wrap its domestic run with $252.8M, versus ‘Fantastic Beasts” $234M.
Combined with overseas grosses, the film has crossed the $500M line, but this apparently is not enough to turn a profit. It’s projected that ‘Justice League’ needs to do over $700M to really make money for Warner Brothers. Considering that it’s already opened in every major market, that may not happen.
Trailing just behind ‘Justice League’ is this fall’s surprise hit ‘Wonder’ starring Julia Roberts and Jacob Tremblay, based on the YA novel by RJ Palacio. ‘Wonder’ took in $12.5M, well on its way to $100M. Not bad for a film that only cost $20M to make.
Even if ‘Justice League’ makes the projected $252.8M, it won’t catch Marvel’s ‘Thor: Ragnarok’ which is just shy of $300M and is still going strong five weeks in. This weekend, it added $9.65M to it’s total.
Meanwhile, Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg holiday comedy ‘Daddy’s Home 2’ hung in at #5 with $7.5M.
Though they didn’t crack the Top Five, several highly-praised, awards season hopefuls are pulling relatively huge audiences, which helped bolster this weekend’s totals. ‘Lady Bird’, ‘Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri’, ‘The Shape of Water’ and ‘Call Me By Your Name’ (winner of best feature at the Gotham Independent Film Awards) are all drawing significant numbers for what are low-budget, specialty titles. James Franco’s ‘The Disaster Artist’ is not only selling out screenings, but the audiences are loving it and very vocal in their enthusiasm. This sounds like a sure fire cult classic in the making! Not only are they audible in their enjoyment in the theaters, but they are taking to social media, with ‘The Disaster Artist’ generating the most heat among the new releases.
A rival studio head praised the marketing, saying:
“It takes a hip, edgy distributor like A24 who knows how to stoke a hipster crowd to get to these great results.”
- Coco (Disney) – $108.7M
- Justice League (Warner Brothers) – $16.58M
- Wonder (Lionsgate) – $12.5M
- Thor: Ragnarok (Disney) – $9.65M
- Daddy’s Home 2 (Paramount) – $7.5M
The studios are all waiting out ‘Star Wars: The Last Jedi’, so next weekend will also not see many changes. The only movie that stands a chance of cracking the Top Five is senior-skewing Morgan Freeman/Tommy Lee Jones comedy ‘Just Getting Started’ which may drive ‘Daddy’s Home 2’ from the list.
Check back and see how things turn out!
Source: Deadline
