Battle at the Box Office 12/18/23
Riding high on strong reviews, Wonka took the top spot at the weekend box office with a solid, $30+ million debut.
Wonka took in $39 million over its opening weekend, one of the best openings in recent years for a musical. It’s a better opening than Into the Woods, Mary Poppins Returns, Cats, and The Greatest Showman, all of which opened shortly before or on Christmas weekend in their respective years. The question is how good will the legs be for Wonka, as all of those movies, except Cats, had strong holds week to week following their debuts, with The Greatest Showman in particular eventually making 11x its opening weekend at the domestic box office. If Wonka can do 3x or 4x on its opening weekend over the next few weeks, it will be close to or over $200 million at the domestic box office. Wonka has already made $151.4 million worldwide, as it had a strong international debut ahead of this past weekend’s domestic gross. The budget for Wonka was also not the extreme bloat we’ve seen from this year’s biggest disasters at $125 million, so it’s already well on its way to breaking even and being profitable in the theatrical window. It didn’t quite top the Tim Burton Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, which opened to over $56.1 million in 2005.
Speaking of holding well, The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes remained in 2nd place with another $5.8 million and only dropped 37% from last weekend. It now has $145.2 million domestically and $291.6 million worldwide. While it didn’t quite reach the heights of any of the main Jennifer Lawrence Hunger Games series, Lionsgate has to be pleased with its staying power and performance.
Last week’s #1, The Boy and The Heron, dropped to third place with another $5.5 million, a 58% drop from last week’s debut. The movie added 120 more theaters and currently has $23.4 million domestically and $100.3 million worldwide. Fellow Japanese export, Godzilla Minus One, took fourth with another $5 million, also adding theaters, and now has $34.4 million domestically and $57.4 million worldwide.
Trolls Band Together rounded out the top 5 with another $3.9 million, bringing it to $88.6 million domestically and $183.2 million worldwide.
Further down the list, the special Fathom Event, Christmas with The Chosen: Holy Night, took 7th place with $2.9 million. Poor Things expanded to 73 theaters and broke into the top 10 with $1.2 million and 10th place.
The Per Theater average went to the Jeffrey Wright starring American Fiction, which made $32,067 in each of the 7 theaters it was playing in.