We have arrived at the final month of the year. And that comes on the heels of a massively successful Thanksgiving season that was, in terms of box office totals, the biggest ever. During the month I did a couple of deep dives on my personal Facebook page in regards to an analysis of this box office phenomenon, so I’ll forgo getting into it too much here, but nevertheless, while going into the month many were trying to make “Glicked” happen (“Gladiator II” + “Wicked”), in a parallel way to “Barbenheimer” from last year, it was instead “Wicked” and “Moana 2” that put on quite the show, giving the end of November two $100+ million openings in back-to-back weekends, opening just five days apart, with “Gladiator II” being a decently successful third wheel to the party.
Now as we move onto December and into the Christmas season, I project that there will be a lot of Thanksgiving leftovers to go around. This duo of “Wicked” and “Moana 2” might be the driving force throughout December, too, especially since there’s not really a December release on the scale of a Star Wars, Avatar, or Spider-Man that we’ve seen in Decembers past. But as this post is focused on the releases that do exist on the calendar, I’ll say that there is quite the wide variety of releases that exist, it’s just that most of them will come with a bit of an interesting conversation with no guaranteed success as opposed to the broadly appealing Hollywood blockbusters that we often see at this time of year, and did see during Thanksgiving. But hey, even if excitement levels might vary, the polarizing nature of many of these definitely gives us plenty to talk about in this post, so lets dive in and explore what’s out there!
As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada an are always subject to change.
December 6 – 8
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| A24's "Y2K" |
This first weekend of December is already in the books. The weekend was dominated by the aforementioned Thanksgiving holdovers as “Moana 2,” “Wicked,” “Gladiator II” and “Red One” took the top four spots. I actually had this part of the post typed up before the weekend started, but got busy with various things. If I’m being honest, I wasn’t too concerned about getting this post out before this weekend because most of the fun happens closer to Christmas. The first weekend of December is often dominated by the Thanksgiving slate. Hollywood usually avoids this weekend in regards to bigger release in order to give a bit more breathing room before the Christmas blockbusters. As such, there were no new releases that opened above $5 million. Most of them opened below $3 million and in a slightly different order than I expected, so with the benefit of hindsight, I went back and re-wrote this. But there are a lot of them, so buckle up. I go through these quick.
The highest-grossing new release was the Tegulu-language film Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2. This opened in fifth place with an estimated $4.8 million from 1,245 theaters. I say estimated because actual results weren’t posted for this one. There are a lot of these Indian films that come out and I don’t often cover them. And that’s not out of a lack of desire, but many of them come out of nowhere with little to no mainstream advertising or scheduled release dates. The American distributors for these do a great job of opening these movies in specific locations where their target audience shows up, leading to high per-theater totals despite the low theater counts. But reporting numbers is not something they do good at. They sometimes even only post the first weekend results, and usually only the estimates. So it’s hard to project and forecast. But nevertheless, this movie is a sequel to the 2021 film “Pushpa: The Rise – Part 1.” It’s about a character named Pushpa Raj, who is a smuggler that works in the realm of smuggling red sandalwood, rising up in the smuggling industry while avoiding the authorities. Both are three-hour Indian action films. And if you’ve seen movies like “RRR,” you’ll know that these long and silly Indian action films are quite common in Indian cinema.
Despite opening in just 846 theaters, the next highest new release was Solo Leveling: The ReAwakening. This opened in seventh place with $2.5 million. In between this and “Pushpa: The Rule – Part 2” was actually the IMAX re-release of “Interstellar,” which pulled in $4.6 million from 165 IMAX theaters. But back to “Solo Leveling,” this started as a South Korean portal fantasy web novel in 2016 and was then adaptated into a webtoon in 2018. Season 1 of the anime series adaptation was released earlier this year beginning in January and has 12 episodes. “Solo Leveling: ReAwakening” is actually a recap of Season 1 that tacks on the first two episodes of Season 2, which starts in January of 2025. So anyone who was a fan of Season 1 can head out to theaters to get a head start on Season 2
Sliding in right after “Solo Leveling” is actually not a movie, but rather the concert film For King + Country: A Drummer Boy Christmas. Taylor Swift certainly popularized this current trend of recording one of your concerts and putting it into theaters. She wasn’t the first to do something like that, but with how much she made that has certainly inspired more to give it a try. This concert film from For King + Country was recorded at one of their performances in the Toyota Center in Houston, Texas, and pulled in $2.3 million from 1,540 theaters. The popular Christian band also made a movie about their story called “Unsung Hero,” which was released back in April. It was more about their parents discovering their sister’s talents, but it was written and directed by Joel Smallbone, one of the brothers in the duo. In 2025, they will apparently be going on a brief touring hiatus to work on their next musical project and next movie.
The movie that I initially had first in this post was the horror comedy Y2K. And I listed it first because it was the movie that was released in the most theaters – 2,108. In fact, it was the only new release to open in over 2,000 theaters. So if you managed to go to your local theater this past weekend, there’s a good chance you saw posters for it or noticed it on the box office kiosk when you purchased your tickets. But the box office numbers indicate that you may have also chose to skip it and see something else because this one did not connect with audiences, nor did it gain their interest. The movie is a horror comedy about the Y2K crisis. If you’re too young to know what I’m talking about there, back in 1999 a lot of people were worried about what would happen when the calendar turned over to the year 2000. Nothing actually happened. But there did exist conspiracy theorists who thought something would. This movie is comedy in the vein of “Superbad,” but portrays a high school New Years Eve party where the appliances and technology all come to life and start killing all the teenagers at this party. And maybe it’s a premise that would’ve worked had it come out closer to the actual year 2000. But in 2024, it just didn’t connect. It probably didn’t help that on Rotten Tomatoes the critics score was 44 percent and the audience score was 49 percent. So poor word of mouth from those who did go that resulted in a ninth place finish with just $2.1 million.
Rounding out the top 10 was the holdover “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever” pulling in another $1.5 million. Just outside the top 10 in eleventh place with $1.1 million was the final wide release of the weekend, Werewolves, which opened in 1,351 theaters. I guess people just weren’t in the mood for horror-related projects this weekend. The Halloween spirit has evaporated. Or maybe this one just wasn’t advertised very well. It’s almost exactly what it seems like. It’s a monster movie about werewolves. Specifically it’s about two scientists who are trying to stop a mutation that turns people into werewolves after being touched by a super-moon the year before. There weren’t a lot of critics who reviewed this one. Just like there wasn’t a lot of humans overall that went into see it. But of the 35 critics on Rotten Tomatoes that submitted a review, they were split down the middle as it has a 51 percent score. This might be the type of movie that ends up on a streaming service somewhere, but theaters was not the place that it performed well.
And just for fun, just to show how many other movies showed up in moderate release this weekend, Vertical Entertainment released The Order into 603 theaters, earning $877,855. We had another concert movie released, with Laufey’s A Night at the Symphony: Hollywood Bowl, which captured one of her recent performances with the LA Philharmonic, which played in 133 theaters and made $845,370. The documentary RM: Right People, Wrong Place opened in 595 theaters and made $626,534. Its subject is BTS leader RM. The Return, an adaptation of the second half of “The Odyssey,” starring Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche as Odysseus and Penelope, opened in 629 theaters and made $361,507. Trailer Park Boys Presents: Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties was released in 285 theaters and made $210,000. And finally, the horror comedy Get Away, which stars Nick Frost and is about a family that goes on vacation to an island that winds up being inhabited by a serial killer, opened in 474 theaters and made $104,976. If I counted right, that’s a total of 11 new movies that opened in at least 100 theaters. You might find an interesting combination at them at your local theater as you go see the other big releases. Now onto the next weekend!
December 13 – 15
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| Sony's "Kraven the Hunter" |
I mentioned at the beginning of this post that there’s not really a movie on the scale of a Star Wars, Avatar, or Spider-Man coming out this month. Well, the word “scale” was the most important there because with Spider-Man, I was referring to the December 2021 release of “Spider-Man: No Way Home,” which opened to $260 million domestically. No, there is not a movie of that scale getting release this month. But there is a Spider-Man movie coming out. Or Spider-Man adjacent, that is. And that’s Sony’s release of Kraven the Hunter, the latest in their series of Spider-Man villains and other characters getting their own movie without the presence of Spider-Man. Kraven the Hunter has been around in the comics since 1964 as one of Spider-Man’s greatest foes. He’s typically a big-game hunter whose goal in life is to beat Spider-Man and prove himself as the world’s greatest hunter. Aaron Taylor-Johnson will be playing him in this film and he’ll be hunting… something. Not Spider-Man in this movie. But they’ll give his origin story here and we’ll see where and how they use him in the future. I’d say I’m not sure what Sony’s overall plan is, but honestly I don’t know if Sony knows what their plan is. It seems they’re throwing things at the wall to see what sticks, and most of it isn’t sticking. In this realm of movies, “Morbius” opened to $39 million, which itself was seen as a disappointment. But that looks great in comparison to “Madame Web,” which opened to just $15.3 million earlier this year. The Venom movies have done well, but even the third one opened to just $51 million, which is a far cry lower than the first two, which opened to $80 million and $90 million, respectively. So there’s not been a whole lot of optimism or excitement for “Kraven the Hunter.” And it having been delayed several times doesn’t help it’s case. It’s tracking to open higher than “Madame Web,” but that’s not a particularly high bar. They have leaned into the R-rating this time. We’ll see if that hurts or helps. Many fans wanted “Morbius” and “Venom” to get that rating, so those fans will get their wish in that regard with “Kraven.”
I do find my intro a tad bit amusing in context of this weekend. I say no movie on the scale of Star Wars, Avatar, or Spider-Man. But there was kind of a Spider-Man movie opening this weekend and it’s paired with a Lord of the Rings movie as the franchise returns to the animated realm with The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim. Again, scale is the key word here, though. All of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies opened in December. The average opening of the six movies is $65.8 million, yet this one is tracking to open in the $5-10 million range. I feel the reasoning behind that is a combination of awareness not being super high and people being not quite sure what to do with this. Movie adaptations of Lord of the Rings started as animation before the live-action movies came out, so it’s not like that’s completely unique. What is unique is that this movie is anime-style specifically. And thus it seems like it will perform more like an anime film rather than a Lord of the Rings film. Anime is increasing in popularity here in the states, but it’s still not the most popular medium, comparatively. A lot of them open in the $5-10 million range, give or take a bit, with the highest hitting around $20-30 million. If this movie hit the latter range, that would probably be considered a huge success, but it isn’t seeming likely. In regards to story, this is set 183 years before the original trilogy and tells the story of the House of Helm Hammerhand, the legendary King of Rohan. Not helping this movie’s case is that recent trips to Middle Earth haven’t exactly been received as warmly. The original trilogy is a classic to many. The Hobbit movies… not so much. And “The Rings of Power” has had two seasons of mostly mixed reviews. So the Middle Earth novelty has maybe worn off a bit. People might be waiting for something more universally praised, which hasn’t quite been “The War of the Rohirrim” so far as early reviews have it sitting around 65 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. Not terrible, but not great, either.
December 20 – 22
Disney's "Mufasa: The Lion King"
While the prior weekend gives us an appetizer into familiar franchises leading up to Christmas, the weekend right before Christmas, which is on a Wednesday this year, is where the real party begins. Again, holdovers are certain to still be strong throughout the season. But in terms of the two big new releases, it’s poised to be a battle of two major family films, both of which are tracking to open in a similar range. But I’ll start here by talking about Mufasa: The Lion King, a prequel to the 2019 remake focusing on the origins of Mufasa. “The Lion King” has been one of Disney’s biggest films ever since its release ever since its release 30 years ago, so it makes sense that they keep returning to it in various ways. And despite the very mixed reaction to the 2019 movie (and “mixed” might be putting it nicely), the branding was still very strong as it opened to $191.8 million domestically and finished with $543.6 million domestically and $1.661 billion worldwide, one of the biggest box office performances ever, currently standing at No. 10 on the all-time worldwide box office chart. And if you know Disney well enough, you know from the moment that happened that they weren’t going to let that go without a follow-up of some sort. And they had options of what to do here and they ultimately decided on the prequel route, telling the story of how Mufasa and Scar came to the point of going from brothers to bitter enemies. Based on the trailers, it seems they are going the route that Mufasa was an orphan who was befriended by the young prince Taka and adopted into their family. Taka eventually becomes known as Scar. We of course know how things end. But the goal of a prequel is to show the journey of how they got there.
Before moving onto the next movie, how well is this actually going to do at the box office? Well, the first comparison that came to my mind in the Disney remake realm is “Alice in Wonderland” from 2010. That’s another movie that, for various reasons, both made a ton of money and wasn’t really highly regarded by audiences. It initially opened to $116.1 million in 2010. When the sequel finally came out six years later, it opened to just $26.9 million. I highly doubt “Mufasa” is going to dip quite that low. The Lion King brand will help it do at least somewhat decently. But in terms of a percentage drop-off from a first movie to its second movie, that might not be too far off. Box Office Pro projects that the movie will open in the $55-75 million range, which puts it in the realm of 2015’s “Cinderella” or “Maleficent,” both of which opened just below $70 million. So that wouldn’t be terrible. But compared to a first movie that opened to $191 million, that would be a huge drop-off. Now this does come from Academy Award Winner Barry Jenkins. Not that many families or Disney fans will recognize that name, but the fact that he’s directed a movie that won best picture makes for an interesting discussion. Is he here just for his Disney paycheck to fund his next smaller film? Or does he have a good story on his hands that he wanted to tell? If the response to the movie is at least average or better than the first, that might not lead to a bigger opening, but if word of mouth is positive, Christmas releases have a tendency of holding really well throughout the month and into the new year. So that might be a better judgment of how its received rather than the opening weekend.
And now to its competition. Another family-friendly film targeting a very similar demographic. And another franchise film. This is the release of Sonic the Hedgehog 3? Is it possible that Sonic pulls the upset and defeats the massive Disney film? Early tracking says its quite possible as Box Office Pro’s latest long range forecast pegs it in the $65-85 million range. Famously the first movie released their trailer, got a lot of complaints about the design, then postponed the movie to completely redo Sonic’s design. The final result ended up pleasing audiences quite a bit and it opened to $58.0 million. It’s final result is hard to look too far into because COVID hit a few weeks after its release, but the sequel in 2022 opened to $72.1 million and finished with $190.9 million. There’s been generally positive reactions to both movies, which bodes well for the third movie. The second movie introduced Tails and Knuckles into the gang along with Sonic. And now the third one introduces Shadow as an antagonist for them to deal with, with Keanu Reeves as the voice cast. Jim Carrey also returns as Dr. Robotnik, as he’s been in all three of these movies. So all things considered, there’s a solid chance that this matches or improves upon the second movie and thus actually takes the weekend. It’s also worth noting that December releases often open smaller and have longer legs. So even if “Sonic 3” doesn’t improve upon the second one on opening weekend, it’s conceivable that it might hold better throughout the holiday if its received well and could outgross the second movie’s $190.9 million domestic total. Regardless it should make for an interesting race at the box office. Christmas has proven that multiple movies can coexist at the same time throughout the holiday season, but two movies aimed at a similar target audience will definitely test that. And if I were to guess, “Mufasa” might be the one to underperform while “Sonic 3” overperforms,” but we will see how this plays out.
Tagging along for the ride, just for fun, will the latest from Angel Studios, the movie Homestead, a movie that in a press release earlier this year, Angel Studios co-founder Jeffrey Harmon described as a hope-filled, family apocalypse story. “Homestead goes on a wild ride through the crash of civilization, only to reveal that family, community, and love are the ultimate survival advantage,” he said. That makes for a bit of an interesting combination of genres. An apocalyptic action thriller with a touch of hope, faith, and religion. The movie is based on a book titled “Black Autumn” by Jeff Kirkham and Jason Ross, and stars Neal McDonough and Dawn Olivieri in the lead roles. The initial goal of this is to also transition it into a series as well that will pick up where the movie leaves off. Angel Studios has been desperately trying to chase the success of “Sound of Freedom” last year, which grossed $184 million domestically. But they have yet to have a follow-up movie gross over $20 million since then. Their last attempt was during the Thanksgiving season where “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin” opened to $5 million against “Wicked” and “Gladiator II.” It quickly disappeared from theaters after just three weeks. I’m guessing “Homestead” might follow a similar trajectory.
December 25 – 29
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| Searchlight's "A Complete Unknown" |
Christmas hits on a Wednesday this year, and we have four movies opening right on Christmas Day. Which means the box office release strategy this month reflects that of last month around Thanksgiving. Yes, Thanksgiving is obviously on a Thursday, but the movies that opened that week opened on the day before – Wednesday. Leading the pack will probably be “Sonic 3” and “Mufasa” again, but of the four new ones, it’s like that A Complete Unknown will lead the way. This is the latest in the long string of musical biopics that Hollywood keeps churning out. This month’s feature is Bob Dylan and the movie reportedly manages to fit around 40 Bob Dylan songs in the movie, with the actors doing their own live singing and playing their own instruments, as it follows his life and career from January 1961, when he moved to New York City, up until his 1965 concert at the Newport Folk Festival. The movie will attempt to drawn in audiences both old and young, with the older audiences coming for Bob Dylan and his music, while the younger audiences might be showing up for Timothée Chalamet. These musical biopics have been very hit and miss as of late. And while it’s debatable as to whether Dylan was as big of an influence as the likes of Elvis or Queen, whose musical biopics did very well, the Chalamet factor and the holiday season could lead this to decent results. Reports are that this is one of Chalamet’s best performances that should lead him to another Oscar nomination. Early reviews are mostly positive as it currently sits at 75 percent with 68 reviews counted. That’s not unanimous, rave reviews, but high enough to indicate that this could be a good crowd-pleaser.
Is it Christmas? Or is it Halloween? Well, we might be doing a bit of a blink-182 and having Halloween on Christmas because this next movie is the horror film Nosferatu, a remake of the old classic by Robert Eggers, director of “The Witch,” “The Lighthouse,” and “The Northman.” The original 1922 “Nosferatu” was among the first on-screen adaptations of Bram Stoker’s 1987 novel “Dracula.” It was a German adaptation that was technically an unauthorized and unofficial adaptation of the book, but it was very much one of the most influential movies for the horror genre and is still quite prevalent in pop culture over 100 years later. Early indications are that this Robert Eggers remake is very much a Robert Eggers film. He’s a filmmaker who loves becoming completely enveloped into the time periods that he explores, getting as dark and realistic as he can. He’s not a director who is interested in holding back or pandering to mainstream audiences. This has led his movies to be somewhat divisive. Either you’re all in and love his takes or his movies rub you the wrong way. “The Witch,” for example, had a 91 percent critics score on Rotten Tomatoes, but a 60 percent from audiences and a C- CinemaScore. If you’re looking for a fun, mainstream Dracula adaptation, this might not be your thing. But early critical reviews have it at a 95 percent. So it seems like it’ll be par for the course for Eggers. And if you’re wondering why Christmas for this movie, the likely answer is that it’s being positioned for awards consideration rather than the holidays. Eggers’ biggest opening weekend was “The Northman” with $12.3 million, while “The Witch” in 2016 opened to $8.8 million. So this isn’t necessarily expected to be a huge hit, but brand name awareness could lead it to being Eggers’ highest opening.
Speaking of movies positioned for awards consideration as opposed to the holidays, we might as well lead right into Babygirl while we’re at it. If watching erotic thrillers is what you love doing for Christmas, then you do you, I suppose. But that’s why I say this is an awards play rather than a holiday play. Oscar nominations will be around the corner after this movie’s release and we’re currently in the thick of the awards season, so A24 would like this movie fresh on people’s minds. Whether or not the movie as a while gets showered with nominations is up for debate, but Nicole Kidman is the lead in this movie and it’s her performance that’s getting the high praise that seems like it could be leading her to another Oscar nomination. She plays a high-ranked CEO who embarks on a forbidden romance with an intern who is much younger than she is, so the movie is one that explores the complexity of power dynamics and sexuality within a professional setting as Kidman is nearly 30 years older than her co-star Harris Dickinson. Although you might not realize the gap is quite that large just by watching the movie. The age gap is one of the main points of the plot, but it’s still nevertheless quite impressive that Kidman is nearing 60 because she doesn’t look even close to being that old. She’s one of these Hollywood actors who managed to find the Fountain of Youth. Probably the same Fountain that Tom Cruise found.
And finally, a movie that might be looking to please both holiday audiences and awards season voters, instead of just the latter, is the sports drama The Fire Inside. The movie itself might not be Christmas-specific with its themes, but seeing the latest sports drama over the holidays is a fun past-time for many. “The Fire Inside” tells the story of Claressa Shields, a professional boxer and mixed martial artist. She is one of only four boxers in history – male or female – to hold all four major world titles in boxing (WBA, WBC, IBF, and WBO) in two weight classes. She also won gold medals at the 2012 and 2016 Olympics, making her the first American boxer to win consecutive Olympic medals. She was also the first American woman to win an Olympic medal in boxing, given that 2012 was the first year that women’s boxing was a part of the Olympics. I’m not sure how much of this movie I just spoiled by talking about this recent sports history, but her being a gold-medal winner 12 years ago is also in the trailer and the IMDb description of the movie, so I educated myself on her history. This is the type of movie that’s more about the journey and her influence on others around her rather than the final result. The movie debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival this year and currently holds an early 96 percent from 26 reviews, so it was well received there, which bodes well for awards consideration and audience interest. It actually has a decent chance at opening higher than the previous two movies mentioned, or at the very least holding well over the holidays and into January. Feel-good sports dramas with positive reviews have a tendency to hang around.
