The holiday box office was pretty merry for The Color Purple, middling for Aquaman
Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, along with new releases Ferrari, The Color Purple, and The Boys In The Boat, spelled success for theaters over the weekend
Aux News Aquaman
Even if most cities didn’t have a white Christmas this year, it was a green Christmas at the box office this year. With three major releases all slated on Christmas day—that’s The Color Purple, Ferrari, and The Boys In The Boat—families were keen to leave eggnog and wrapping paper behind to watch Adam Driver drive (ha) and Callum Turner row. All in all, the box office’s four-day total was up 11% from this time last year, despite a massive 2022 showing by Avatar: The Way Of Water drowning out this year’s equally water-based winner (via Deadline).
While Synderverse closer Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom clocked in as this year’s number one film, its $40 million haul is still a pretty skimpy catch. At a reported budget of $205 million, this is yet another disappointing performance from a DC tentpole.
Jason Momoa’s aquatic adventure was followed by a sweet serenade from Timothée Chalamet’s Wonka, which brought in a total of $28 million. Third place goes to family-friendly animated flick Migration, which flew in at $17.5 million, followed by Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell’s steamy Anyone But You at $8 million, and a stalwart The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes at $7.2 million, a full 7% rise from last week’s totals.
Spots six through ten are led by Telugu-language epic Salaar at $6.3 million and A24's The Iron Claw at $4.9 million. The wrestling romp is followed by The Boy And The Heron with $3.9 million, Poor Things with $3 million, and Godzilla Minus One with $2.7 million.
As for the three new films, The Color Purple sang with an estimated $18.1 million on just its opening day. Preview screenings for The Boys In The Boat and Ferrari brought in an estimated $5.7 million and $2.9 million respectively (via Deadline). As official numbers from these studios haven’t come in yet, they are not included in the top 10.
Here’s the top 10 again from Box Office Mojo:
1. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom
2. Wonka
3. Migration
4. Anyone But You
5. The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes
6. Salaar
7. The Iron Claw
8. The Boy And The Heron
9. Poor Things
10. Godzilla Minus One
13 Comments
We saw Migration. It was wholesome and cute, and substantially more mature than anything in the Gru-niverse. I mean, you’re not missing anything if you don’t see it, but yeah, not bad.It was preceded, however, by a pretty dreadful short, about the supervillain Vector from the original Despicable Me, trapped on the moon. Violating the laws of physics in a cartoon is fine in general, but I draw the line at depicting Mars as being about twice as far from Earth as the Moon is.
…Why on earth would Illumination make a short about the least engaging character from their first movie thirteen years later?Well, it’s not really on Earth, I guess, based on what you wrote, but you get my drift.
One big problem with it is that Vector wasn’t a character anyone was rooting for in the original movie, and nothing in the short makes you want to root for him either. He’s arrogant, short-sighted, and overconfident. So (inasmuch as I even remembered him from that movie) I didn’t particularly care if he succeeded. It would have been a much better idea to have the short focus on the Minion who’s trapped there with him instead.
“While Synderverse closer Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom clocked in as this year’s number one film”It did??? I thought that was Barbie.
in the context of ‘movies released on christmas day’ it was number one this year.
but I thought it was middling and underperformed? WHICH ONE IS IT
Then write “number one this Christmas”.
Not a question or argument. Just would have left no room for misinterpretation.
What’s “middling” about winning the Christmas box office? You guys are doing backflips to say that Aquaman was a failure here when no other film did as well as Aquaman.
No other film cost as much as Aquaman either. It’s not a backflip to point out that a movie opened lower not just than the original, or a comparable film that opened on the same weekend last year, but lower than even industry analysts were projecting it to.
It’s all part of a big media conspiracy to keep the brilliant, engrossing DC movies down. Aquaman would have made ten times that much by now if it weren’t for those paid hacks.
You’re purple what is middling?
These numbers are off. The Color Purple was released on Christmas Day, which was on a Monday and it should easily be the number one film this week. Aquaman only managed $27 million on its opening weekend, not $40 million. The additional $10 million it made was also on Christmas Day, but also after the weekend. All of these numbers are inflated (except the Color Purple) and had far weaker numbers this past weekend then last year.
It’s considered a “long weekend” because of the holiday. A lot of people go to the movies because it’s one of the few things open on Christmas, so I don’t see what the benefit of omitting it is. Box Office Mojo reports both the strict Friday-Sunday numbers and the Friday-Monday gross. This year, the total box office gross for the long weekend was $140.1 million. During the same weekend last year (December 23-26), the gross was $141.7 million. So yes, this year’s Friday-Sunday’s numbers were weaker than last year’s, but this year’s Christmas gross was almost enough to make up for it.https://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/by-year/2022/The Color Purple would have undoubtedly been number one if it had opened on Friday… but it didn’t, so it wasn’t.