The Boy And The Heron takes the weekend box office, with Godzilla Minus One not far behind
Hayao Miyazaki's latest film has won the U.S. box office
Aux News Godzilla Minus One
It’s an exciting weekend for international cinema at the U.S. box office, with two Japanese films hitting the top three in American theaters—one live-action and one animated! The top spot went to the animated one, Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy And The Heron, which opened with $10 million (and on 1,000 fewer screens than second place’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes, which is in its fourth week).
The other Japanese movie, Godzilla Minus One, landed in third in its second week and made $8 million. Godzilla and Studio Ghibli rocking the American box office charts, how cool is that? Should Nintendo re-release The Super Mario Bros. Movie while we’re at it?
Trolls Band Together ($6.2 million) and Wish ($5.3 million) finish up the top five for the second week in a row, followed by Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé, which is hanging around and has made nearly $30 million. After that is Napoleon, having made $53 million after three weeks ahead of its eventual Apple TV+ premiere, and then Waitress: The Musical (the top 10’s only other newcomer), which made $2.5 million this week. Finally, the top 10 ends with controversial Indian film Animal and church-y multiverse movie The Shift.
Further down the charts, a Die Hard re-release made $923,000, the debut of Poor Things (on a very limited rollout of only nine screens) made a relatively huge $644,000, and Oppenheimer came sneaking back into theaters to add $350,000 to its $325 million total from over the summer.
Here’s the top 10 again from Box Office Mojo.
- The Boy And The Heron
- The Hunger Games: The Ballad Of Songbirds & Snakes
- Godzilla Minus One
- Trolls Band Together
- Wish
- Renaissance: A Film By Beyoncé
- Napoleon
- Waitress: The Musical
- Animal
- The Shift
22 Comments
I saw the movie in IMAX last Monday and it was great, like a boy Spirited Away, mixed with a lot of stuff from his other flicks. And Robert Pattinson was great and unrecognizable (I thought it was Mark Hammill!)I hope it’s not his last film, but…well…
Takes so many years from start to finish (they started working on Boy/Heron in 2016 (i.e., story-boarding)) that I doubt that at 82 years old, he’s likely to start another project of this scale. That said, just got back from watching it and it’s a great swan-song for a brilliant career.
A Die Hard re-release? Yippie-Kai-what???
Just got out of it, first chance to watch it in theaters. Actually noticed new things that I guess I zone out on at home, like the swat guy snagging his hand on the roses before the assault
Oh, I don’t remember seeing that.
35th anniversary and it’s regarded by many as a Christmas movie. I saw it today with my kid and I swear she could not have been more bored. I almost left her in the parking lot.Didn’t help that the transfer wasn’t great in the theater I saw it in – it was very grainy and muddy.
I ran into that issue too in my theatre. It seemed a bit off, but I thought that must be just me. Only me and one other person in a theatre that holds probably 200, but I still had a blast seeing it on the big screen for the first time.
After their collossal losing streak this year, I bet Disney wishes they still had distrubution rights to Miyazaki’s movies lol.Crazy to see two of the top three movies right now are Japanese imports, while the majority of American blockbusters flopped this year. Although it makes a lot of sense since identity politics and woke culture just doen’t exist in Japanese entertainment, while American movies are infested with it. People want what they want, apparently.
This is pretty cool. It didn’t have any real competition but it’s nice to see people came out for it. Sadly I won’t get a chance to see it until the week after Christmas but it’s already a planned date for me and the wife for then.
I think we can take Minus One’s success as a sign moviegoers are experiencing human fatigue.
Has there ever been a more random Top 10 for the U.S. box office?
The weekend of Nov. 9th, 1984 was kind of wild. George Burns beat The Terminator, Mozart, and Freddy Krueger.
Holy shit, Teachers. Talk about a forgotten 80s relic.
Maybe Beyonce should have waited for a summer release. Most college students are home by now but this tour is Renaissance, not Homecoming. Everyone is madly hunting for that special “thing” for someone with the focus of a sharpshooter. Add in all of the rushing for work deadlines, family events and obligations and we end up with a largely forgettable month. And, at least to me, going to a concerts is a “mood”. It isn’t “hey lets catch a comedy this week” or “The HG sounds interesting.” It’s an event that relies on months of hype. Concerts can’t rely so much on ‘story’. Concerts tend to feel like summer, like a small but very meaningful personal outing, something you’ll tell stories about later. Presenting a tour on a screen is challenge enough; this just seemed like a very unusual bad marketing decision by the Knowles-Carters. Following Swift’s presentation didn’t help either.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
I agree the release time doesn’t seem ideal, but she was touring this past summer, and waiting until next summer feels like it’d be too late to capitalize on the hype. Maaaybe sometime January or February 2024 would’ve been better. I wonder if the strategy was to maximize the tour time during the summer and make money that way, and then the movie coming out a few months later would just be icing on the cake.
That makes sense. It isn’t easy keeping your brand hot for months and months. After the holidays would have been better.
it’s a movie OF the tour.. it was still being shot this past summer/fall
Weird flex, Chandler.
Beyonce is mentioned clearly in this piece, so maybe you’re lost.
I was just being a little shit for the sake of being a little shit, sorry about that. Also, my comment disappeared. Did you flag it and it actually did something?
Other bits of box office trivia:
—Waitress is a 5-day-only Fathom Event, so this is basically its *entire* cinematic box office, but it’ll be on VOD/streaming soon, & the performance also sold live tickets at time of filming too.
—Songbirds & Snakes is now only the 2nd film released in November 2023 to reach profitability, after the very low budget Thanksgiving. (Godzilla opened in October, & its wide release didn’t begin until December.)
—The Marvels reached the $200 million mark.
Also, does anyone know the budget on The Boy & the Heron? I’m glad it’s doing so well; I’m just curious HOW well.
i don’t think they’ve reported it but they say it’s the most expensive japanese movie ever made, and the previous most expensive japanese movie ever made was something like 50 million usd. so i mean, reasonable assumption 60+?