The 12 Days of Box Office - Day Eight

By Tim Briody

December 29, 2015

The passing of the torch.

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With Monday’s box office results in, here’s where the real fun begins, especially for the films not named Star Wars.

It’s the most wonderful time of the year at the movies, at least in terms of box office. We’ve said it over and over and over again for the past 15 years: these next weekdays are the holiday box office money train that turns even the most middling performer into a solid hit. It’s the week that turned Titanic and Avatar from movies with decent opening weekends into the biggest movies of all time (until this year, but more on that in a moment). If you can’t make money here, you need to get out of the money making business.

Let’s start with your daily Star Wars: The Force Awakens update. It’s another $31.3 million on Monday, sending it to $571.4 million in just 11 days. It leaps past The Dark Knight to now make it the fifth biggest movie of all time, and is all but assured to be in second place by the end of the week. Keep in mind that Avatar wasn’t here until 43 days in release and Titanic, which was a different box office era at this point, took 148 days. I repeat, The Force Awakens was released 11 days ago. Eleven. Unreal.

Anyway, the Monday total is a 21.8% drop from last Monday, which is perfectly fine. The 11 biggest single days of box office in December history still belong to The Force Awakens, and it will make it 14 because that’s all that remains of 2015.




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We’ll be here with daily updates as Star Wars continues its march to history, which could happen by the end of the weekend.

The big winner over Christmas (which again, is another sentence with the addendum “of films not called Star Wars”) was Daddy’s Home, the Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg comedy, which added $6.3 million on Monday, giving it a tidy $45.1 million in just four days of release. It’s headed towards the $100 million mark and is a needed hit for both leads, after Ferrell’s Get Hard stopped at $90 million and Wahlberg’s Ted 2 could not recapture the magic of the first one and only earned $81 million.

The people behind the Alvin and the Chipmunks franchise are no fools and have released all four films during December. While diminishing returns kicked in four years ago when Shipwrecked earned $133 million relative to the $217 and $219 million earnings of the first two releases, it was this very week that sent it there. The Road Chip added $3.6 million on Monday, giving it $43.5 million after 11 days in theaters.

In perhaps the best reminder of what this week means to movies since The Force Awakens is completely blowing the curve, last Monday Alvin and the Chipmunks earned $2.9 million. So on its second Monday of release, it increased 24.1% from a week ago. That’s the only time of year that this sort of thing happens.

Sisters sees a similar fate, as the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler (and John Cena) comedy adds $2.9 million on Monday after turning in a Christmas weekend that was virtually identical to its opening weekend. Again, that’s the only time of year this sort of thing happens. Sisters is at $40 million after 11 days.

A little further down the top 10 (we’ll cover every film at some point throughout the week), Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight continues its 70mm roadshow release this week, and adds another $1 million in just 100 theaters. In one of the few things in the last 11 days that Star Wars is not leading everything in, The Hateful Eight managed a better per screen average than Star Wars on Monday, much like it did this weekend. It expands to regular digital theaters this weekend, so it will be a performance to watch for sure.

Check back later on this week for full updates on every film in theaters and also that Star Wars thing as this wild week continues.


     


 
 

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