Christmas Box-Office '23 - Coal in the Popcorn Buckets

[AndyDursin]

No film sums up the fading theatrical marketplace and how it's been ravaged both by terrible product AND post-COVID viewing habits than AQUAMAN 2.

AQUAMAN 1 came out at the apex of the super hero cycle and made a FORTUNE -- over a BILLION.

This sequel is barely going to scrape up enough to make $40 million over the weekend...something that was once a ONE DAY gross for these types of films.

OK performance from WONKA, meager performance elsewhere.

Christmas movie-going isn't what it used to be -- and this is going to be a scary sign of things to come for movie goers and theater owners in 2024.

RIDAY AFTERNOON: Right now, it’s looking like Warner Bros/DC’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom will arrive at $40M over 4-days, which is where tracking had it.

That said, Warners can boast, and CEO David Zaslav can be happy, in having the top two films at the box office along with Wonka‘s second weekend in the No. 2 spot with a projected $31M over the Dec. 22-25 span. Friday/previews for Aquaman 2 is $14M with a 3-day of $30M at 3,706 theaters. Wonka‘s second Friday is $7M (-51%), which translates to a 3-day of $22M at 4,213 theaters. We’re hearing that Color Purple‘s Christmas Day gross could be around $10M-$12M, which would put it in the No. 4 spot behind Illumination and Universal’s Migration which is looking at $18M at 3,761 theaters; a better than expected result than the $10M-$12M we were hearing about.

[Eric W.]

A shame. It used to be Christmas time guaranteed at least one "must see" movie.

[Monterey Jack]

2023 will be the final nail in the superhero coffin...aside from Guardians Of The Galaxy 3 (which smartly advertised itself as a definitive END for these characters) and Across The Spider-Verse (which cost less than half of most blockbusters this year), they've been whiffing left and right at the box office, and with good reason. It's not that the MCU oversaturated the market (which they did) or that the recent DCEU movies "don't count" anymore due to the whole thing being scrapped and rebooted, it's that every aspect of these movies -- the "tension-relieving" quips, the F/X flourishes, the Easter Egg previews of upcoming projects -- have become as stale as week-old bread. Like westerns in the 1970s, there's nothing LESS hip than a superhero movie at this point in time. I'm not sure what the next blockbuster gold rush will be, but the superhero genre has entered into a state of terminal exhaustion, and needs to be retired for at least a decade to allow the stink to blow off the post-2019 glut and allow audiences to build a sense of nostalgia for the good ones. By 2033, people would have forgotten the crap, remembered the quality films, and might be ready for more. As it stands, something like The Marvels or Aquaman 2 feels like that guy who was the life of the party at 8:00 PM, but now it's 3:00 AM, he's still on the couch watching TV and eating snacks, and you just want him to go home so you can lock up and go to bed.

[AndyDursin]

Yeah it's hard to figure even the "surefire" sequels like DEADPOOL are going to resurrect the same grosses of yore...another go-around for FANTASTIC FOUR and X-MEN will make more than THE MARVELS, sure, but there's a ceiling now that didn't exist previously. As for AQUAMAN I quite enjoyed the first one and I'm sure this one is probably not as bad as has been reported -- it feels like another case of kool-aid drinkers just deciding "now's the time!" to trash the genre, when they should've been doing it YEARS ago with crap like CAPTAIN MARVEL which they propped up as if it were actually good. James Wan typically doesn't make horrendous stuff.

I still see studio previews gloating about their slate for 2024 and beyond -- and basically they're all sequels, whether they're super-hero related or not. As I've been warning about for years, the industry for theatrical exhibiton is going to die when nothing new is being made and the average viewer no longer has an interest in these old brands they're rehashing to death. The lack of fresh cinematic experiences is going to render the movie theater to the scrap heap and it's as if they simply cannot see it or are refusing to acknowledge it.

[Monterey Jack]

James Wan typically doesn't make horrendous stuff.

Exception that proves the rule...?