There is very little to report this weekend. No new films debuted in the Top Five. Thanksgiving weekend is one of the busiest of the year, so the major studios usually take the weekend after off.
‘Frozen 2’ was #1 again, but it “only” made $34.7M. That’s a higher third weekend than the previous ‘Frozen’, not to mention ‘Ralph Breaks the Internet’, ‘Moana’, and ‘Coco’. The success of ‘Frozen 2’ has pushed Disney past the $10 billion mark for the year, a first for any studio.
Once again, ‘Knives Out’ is #2, followed by ‘Queen & Slim’, ‘Ford v Ferrari’, and ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’. Last week, ‘Queen & Slim’ debuted at #5, behind ‘Ford V Ferrari’ and ‘A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood’, but this week it’s #3. It’s not that it’s picking up, it’s just that the other two have been out longer and are winding down.
TOP FIVE
- Frozen 2 (Disney) – $34.7M
- Knives Out (Lionsgate/Media Rights) – $14M
- Queen & Slim (Universal/Media Rights/Bron) – $6.5M
- Ford V Ferrari (20th Century Fox/Disney) – $6.4M
- A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood (Sony) – $5.2M
Mature drama ‘Dark Water’ from Focus Features, starring Mark Ruffalo, expanded to over 2,000 theaters but it’s not connecting as hoped. It only made $4.1M.
Amazon’s ‘The Aeronauts’ was only opened in a limited number of theaters because it’s coming to streaming on December 20. It only made $30-31,000… because it’s coming to streaming on December 20.
Making the Hall of Shame is STX’s ‘Playmobil: The Movie’. Earning $670,000, it now has the distinction of having the second-worst opening ever for a movie in more than 2,000 theaters. It barely surpassed 2012’s ‘The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure’, which opened with $443,000 and ended its theatrical run with just $1M.
STX knew this was a stinker and only released it because of contractual agreements, but the studio partnered with a whole bunch of different distributors to spread the loss out, so no one is going to lose too much money. STX didn’t promote this movie much at all, and what little it did spend wasn’t for TV or internet ads, but rather on in-theater promotions and attempts to court members of various theater chains’ loyalty programs.
On top of everything, in a unique marketing test, tickets to ‘Playmobil: The Movie’ were $5 across the board– all-ages, all-showings. (Two Canadian chains, ArcLight and Landmark, did not participate in this discount ticket program.) No one wanted to see this no matter what the cost.
The very few people who saw it hated it to the tune of 1½ stars out of five via PostTrak, although kids under 12 gave it 3½. Its CinemaScore was a B+, which actually doesn’t sound that bad. Its Rotten Tomatoes score is 19%.
Things heat back up next weekend with the release of ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’. The weekend after that– the weekend before Christmas– delivers ‘Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker’. That might see some competition from ‘Cats’, but probably not.
Check back to see if ‘Jumanji: The Next Level’ can achieve the same success as ‘Welcome to the Jungle’.
Source: Deadline
