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Weekend Wrap-UpBy Tim BriodyDecember 22, 2019
While it's surprising that without a miracle, The Rise of Skywalker will fall short of joining The Force Awakens (#1 all time with $936 million) and The Last Jedi (#9 with $620 million) in the all time domestic top ten (that's just too big a hill to climb at this point, with the gatekeeper being The Incredibles 2 at $608 million), at the same time it's not, as this is how viewing habits have changed so rapidly in a short amount of time. You can look at the 2016 standalone film Rogue One as possibly the best comparison for the next few weekends, as it started with a $155 million weekend and finished with $532.1 million, good for 13th all time. Notice we don't talk about Solo, because after Star Wars dominated three consecutive Decembers, someone thought it was a good idea to release that one over Memorial Day weekend, and it more or less flopped with just $213 million. Wherever The Rise of Skywalker goes from here, Box Office Prophets will be tracking it over the Twelve Days of Box Office. Second place is Jumanji: The Next Level, dropping 56% to $26.1 million and but crossing the $100 million mark with $101.9 million in two weekends. While Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle was the surprising big winner in 2017 against The Last Jedi, the second weekend hit here gives a little bit of pause as to whether lightning can strike twice. It should course correct this week with some strong daily figures over the holiday, but it's clear that The Next Level is not going to duplicate the $400 million performance of the last one. Frozen II has made it to the promised land mostly intact, earning $12.3 million in its fifth weekend and has $386.5 million to date. Sometime mid week (Christmas Day perhaps, or would that be too on the nose?), Frozen II will match Frozen's $400 million total in a third of the time. I'm not sure there's the staying power to get it to $500 million after the holiday season, but it's going to make a run at it. And now we have our other opener this weekend, Cats. With just $6.5 million, I'd call it a complete disaster but this is a high tide that rises all boats. Plus it's reached "so bad it's good" status after just a weekend based on Twitter reaction that while it's not going to pull a The Greatest Showman (which turned an $8.8 million pre-Christmas weekend into $174.3 million), it's going to end up with a higher total than this weekend indicates. As an added bonus, if you've somehow already seen it, Cats is about to receive an update to some of its visual effects, which is just absolutely unheard of. This is probably not going to impact its box office, but these day one patches are getting out of hand. Knives Out adds $6.1 million in its fourth weekend and has $89.5 million to date. The Christmas week will send it over $100 million, as Rian Johnson sips some tea while the internet reacts to The Rise of Skywalker. Expanding to wide release, likely Oscar contender Bombshell goes from four theaters to 1,480 and earns $5 million. Based on events at Fox News, the film stars Charlize Theron (as Megyn Kelly), Nicole Kidman (as Gretchen Carlson) and Margot Robbie (as a fictional producer) and while the reviews are in the middle (65% Fresh), Theron and Robbie are considered likely nominees for Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress, respectively. Between this and Knives Out, there are certainly movies out there aimed at older audiences and those not interested in or who've already seen Star Wars during the prime box office season. Richard Jewell cements its flop status with $2.5 million and $9.5 million in two weekends. It won't really be much of a factor over the next 10 days as there are some new Christmas releases to sweep it away. Queen & Slim earns $1.8 million and has $36.5 million in four weekends, Black Christmas also adds $1.8 million and has $7.2 million after two weeks, while Ford v. Ferrari finally crosses $100 million in its sixth weekend with $1.8 million and $101.9 million total. Boosted by Star Wars, the top 12 films this weekend earned $241.4 million. That's well ahead of last year, when a bunch of non-Star Wars films earned $165.3 million. We got that weekend's batch of Christmas releases last year, led by Aquaman and $67.8 million. We head into the final weekend of 2019, and with Christmas Day falling on Wednesday there are three new releases/expansions: The critically acclaimed adaptation of Little Women by Greta Gerwig, the animated Spies in Disguise, and the expansion of Uncut Gems, starring Adam Sandler whose performance many are saying deserves an Oscar nomination, which is something that would cause heads to explode if you said this to people in 1999. Merry Christmas to all our readers and Happy 12 Days of Box Office!
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