First weekend of December 2024

Thanks to the gift of Wickona tm, we’re going to set another record this weekend, and just the total of Wickona tm should total more than the 5 year average for the weekend after Thanksgiving (to be fair, I’m taking out 2020 and 2021; if we left those 2 years in, just Moana 2 would gross more than the average of the last 5 years). And I failed to mention last week that Thanksgiving was the last box we needed to check in our recovery from the shutdown, it’s been pretty abysmal since we reopened. Last year’s Thanksgiving featured Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, Napoleon, Wish, Trolls Band Together and Thanksgiving; and all those didn’t add up to what Wicked did….in week 2. So now we’ve had a pre-shutdown (and in some cases, more) weekend in every major release slot. We’ll have a really nice box office cushion this weekend from last year, but next week falls into an outlier category where it depends on how you want to look at it.

Since we’re in a Thanksgiving ‘leap year’, there are only 3 weekends between Thanksgiving and Christmas instead of the usual 4; so if you look at this weekend as the 2nd weekend in December it could be a record weekend, because not much ever opens there. But if you look at it like it’s two weekends before Christmas, there are some Monsters there like Star Wars: The Last Jedi, so it won’t even be close to the record for the weekend before the weekend before Christmas. But we’ve got good product the rest of the year and we’ll finish the year strong, and hopefully there’s some strong legs to those films because January looks abysmal, and we’ll need all the holdover gross we can get.

Now that we’re in December, it’s time for my annual rant reminder that the next couple of weeks behave differently than any other time of the year. If you think of your schedule between now and Christmas, you’re pretty slammed. Shopping, Parties, Travel, end of year Work obligations, it all adds up to a lot of social clutter. And because theatrical marketers are aiming to get high enough on a consumer’s ’to do’ list to generate a purchase (and talk the tagalongs into doing the same), that ‘to do’ list is pretty daunting this time of year and weekend #1 purchases are really tough to generate. Also, during the rest of the year we carefully curate where a film is opening, and try to stay a couple of weeks away from any film that has audience commonality. But starting next Friday, for the next 12 days we usually have a bunch of titles (9 this year, and usually close to $1 billion in negative cost), but we just say ‘fuck it, let’s dump them all on top of each other’. Why do we do that? It’s pretty simple, the ‘Golden 8’, the eight days between Christmas and New Year’s Day all gross like it’s a Saturday Night; so it’s worth being your studio’s Tribute in the Christmas Hunger Games; you just want to be Katniss and not Glimmer*.

Because of the pre Christmas social clutter, the box-office behaves differently this time of year, and if you’re going to be in the know you have to be wary of a few normal industry catchphrases. The first is ‘but Tracking says’ (which always makes me throw up a little in my mouth), and it’s not that tracking is wrong (even though it’s had a rough couple of months), you just have to understand what it’s saying for the next three weeks. This time of year is one of the blind spots of polling, and you have to translate the data into what consumers are telling you. Circling back to how busy we all are from now until Christmas, once Christmas Day hits, it flips around 180 degrees and for the 8 days after (and the way it sets up this year, maybe more like 12 days) we’ve got nothin’ but time. That’s why the Golden 8 is so important, consumers have a ton of time that week and if the product warrants it, we might get consumers to the theater more than once that week. So when polling identifies consumers who are saying they’re going to a movie, they’re not necessarily talking about weekend 1, they might be talking about ‘when they have time’. And that’s where the Hunger Games part of it comes in, if you’re going to open your film on the weekend’s before Christmas, you need some super fans (or they have to be younger and not as busy) to get them out on weekend 1. And even if you do have those superfans, you need to have enough playability to get you to Christmas Day with some inertia, otherwise you’re Glimmer.

The second part of the equation this time of year (because of those golden 8 days), you play long instead of just playing only for the first weekend. During the rest of the year, a film will usually finish at 2.5 to 3 times their opening weekend, but this time of year getting that multiple off the opening weekend is Glimmer. Usually you’ll get multiples of 5 or so this time of year, so that $20 million opening during the rest of the year gets you to 50 or 60, this time of year it gets you to 100. That’s the Christmas release slot.

As this year’s films open next week, the week after and Christmas Day, remember some examples of how this time of year plays out. Two years ago, Avatar 2 opened to $134 million, but tracking had it way higher and some were thinking $200 million. But tracking was probably right, you just needed to translate the data into this season’s behavior. It ended up at $684 million, so if you had a $200 million opening any other time of the year, the multiple would have been about 3.4, which would be about right for a film that played as strong as that film did. But because those people saying they were going did go, but didn’t go on opening weekend (and there was a Large Format component too, where they wanted to see it when seats were available in that format), it was the tracking companies that didn’t know how to read their own data. Back in 2016, Passengers opened to $14.8 million the week before Christmas, but once Christmas Day hit, it exploded and finished with a 6.7 multiple and got to 100.

For the next couple of weeks, let’s all relax every weekend, it’s a long game and it’s not over until we get to New Years, a lot can change. Like every good story, our hero must be in trouble at some point, and you have to wait till the 3rd act to see who Katniss is.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy of a manhunt for a murderer where there are about 50 million plausible suspects with cause, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Moana 2 / Wicked - This might be interesting this weekend. You might have heard that Wicked almost beat Moana on Monday, and then did beat it Wednesday and Thursday. Wicked is ahead today, but there’s a good reason for the weekdays and today; regarding the weekdays Wicked should do better, it skews more adult and this time of year adult skewing movies do better on weekdays than family movies. As far as today, Wicked is more of a big city film and Moana is more suburban and rural, and presales are better in big cities, so the distance Wicked is ahead of Moana today is probably just the difference in presales (and may or may not last tonight).

But the real question is what’s going to happen tomorrow? You would think that Moana pulls away tomorrow (and that will probably happen), but there’s a decent family component to Wicked too, so it might be closer than we thought. However, Wicked is showing its ‘water cooler’ colors today, and the drop from last Friday is right up there with the week after Thanksgiving all-stars like Knives Out. Moana isn’t quite the same though, it’s good, but the top of the Disney Thanksgiving holdovers was Coco and Moana isn’t nearly as steady today. Assuming tomorrow doesn’t do anything wacky, Moana should be down 60% for a 3 day in the mid 50’s, and Wicked looks like a spectacular post Thanksgiving hold of only down 45% for a 3 day in the mid 40’s; and both films should pass $300 million the weekend.

Gladiator II - Looks pretty solid today, down about 50% for a weekend in the mid teens.

Pushpa: The Rule Part 2 - This big budget Bollywood sequel is really generating some impressive numbers, and they went a little wider than they normally do. It’s usually about 600 runs, but they went 1200 here; however it’s the usual suspects that are driving this gross. Texas, New York, Toronto (a lot of Toronto), San Francisco, it’s doing really big business. They had a bunch of previews on Wednesday and Yesterday that grossed about $4.5 million, and the 3 day this weekend looks only a little better than the preview gross. Figure a 3 day of around 5.5 or 6.

Interstellar - Paramount re-issued this Chris Nolan epic in only Large Format theaters, with a couple of 70mm prints. It’s gangbusters and even though it’s only in 165 theaters, the 3 day gross should be in the mid 3’s.

Y2K - This SXSW breakout from A24 opened on 2100 screens, and it’s okay but I think they got unlucky here. This is usually a date where you put something ‘defensively’ because there’s not much going on this weekend, but it’s an outlier weekend and you’ve got a legitimate water cooler movie in Wicked going straight at their audience. This kind of thing just happens, similar to Venom ending up on an outlier World Series weekend, and you just have to roll with it. Looks like a 3 day in the low mid 2’s.

Werewolves - Went 1300 runs there’s not much going on here, maybe a little over a million for the weekend.

• and of course Glimmer was pretty rich, so big budget films can die first too, The Christmas Hunger Games don’t care.