SATURDAY AM: Women are in full attendance this weekend, walking over fanboys, as Thanksgiving holdovers, Disney’s Moana 2 and Universal’s Wicked, are driving an early pre-holiday weekend to $90M, +19% over the same frame a year ago. Meanwhile, Sony’s much kicked-around-the calendar Spider-Man universe character, the R-rated Kraven the Hunter couldn’t even get any animals to attend any showtimes, let alone people, with what’s shaping up to be an $11M-$12M opening per the studio (rivals aren’t wearing rosy glasses with a $10.4M start) on this $110M production. Duly note, muscular men in leather vests do not sell in the same way that surfer girls and singing witches do.
Meanwhile, Warner Bros New Line’s thrifty priced $30M+ animated Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is just not an event for Orc fans nor those of anime with a $5M; the movie was just never teed up that way. Kraven the Hunter gets a C (Madame Web got a C+), while Lord of the Rings gets a B.
While the industry tends to get blase about this weekend, and always looks to blame holiday activities as distractions, there’s several wake-up calls here. First, great family movies have launched in this corridor consistently, therefore this weekend should never, ever, never ever be considered less than par. People do make time to go to the movies in the middle December, read Jumanji: The Next Level ($59.2M), last year’s Wonka ($39M), Spider-Man Into the Spiderverse ($35.3M). Therefore, the frame should be taken very seriously and only confined to those bets which can payoff and nothing less. Studios lick their lips at the 5x-6x holiday multiple, but when you open two duds with zero word of mouth, you’re as good as a tree falling in the woods with no one around.
Second, women do go to the movies if you give them an event film, and they’ll keep coming. Hello, Barbie and It Ends With Us. Many have Moana 2 and Wicked heading to a half billion at the domestic box office.
Third, Sony, it’s time to have a come-to-Jesus with your development department: You have a major Marvel problem, and you need to be far more protective about shepherding such fare. Word was the reason why Madame Web was so disjointed, was because the studio cut several pages from the screenplay before the S.J. Clarkson directed female Spidey lady movie went into production, causing, you got it, act 2 and 3 problems. At a time when studios are so precious about IP, and the only movies that can pull people away from TikTok and steaming are mega event IP titles, it’s best to have more of these scripts bake. If Kevin Feige can hold off a Blade reboot from becoming reality until it’s in great shape, Sony, you can do the same with all your Marvel properties. “Sony has lost Marvel fans,” one razor sharp motion picture marketing source told me recently. Sony is blaming the strikes and the start and stop of production on driving the production cost of this J.C. Chandor directed movie past its original $90M; that’s why it’s not doing well. Sorry, but Shawn Levy’s Deadpool & Wolverine also weathered a start and stop during the strike and became the highest grossing R-Rated movie off all-time at $1.3 billion. In all fairness to Sony, they’re taking a lot of tender loving care with the next Spiderverse animated movie with no plans for that threequel to hit the 2025 release calendar.
Not to mention, comic-book/superhero movies always plummet in weekend 2; it’s all about their openings. If anything, Kraven the Hunter should have been on a 4-day weekend, like originally planned (it was originally schedule for an MLK 2023 weekend). Sony was wiser in handling the Madame Web by playing that bomb over the 5-day Presidents Day weekend to $23.5M opening (the pic finaled at $43.8M).
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UPDATED, FRIDAY AFTERNOON: Whatever ground Disney’s Moana 2 lost to Universal’s Wicked during the course of the week will be more than made up for this weekend, with a lot of walk-up business anticipated on the way to a third frame of $26 million, -49%, with around $6M today at 4,000 locations. The Dwayne Johnson-Auli’i Cravalho animated sequel will stand at $336.9M in domestic box office by EOD Sunday.
Wicked is flying to $357M by Sunday. While it easily became the highest-grossing movie based on a Broadway musical stateside over the Thanksgiving break, it has a way to go before it topples Mamma Mia!‘s global record of $611.4M in 2008. Wicked‘s fourth weekend is $20.5M, -44%, after a $5.3M Friday. Both Moana 2 and Wicked are strong holdovers for a pre-Christmas period such as this. A year ago, Warner Bros opened the Timothée Chalamet musical Wonka to $39M.
Sony/Marvel’s Kraven the Hunter is seeing a $4.7M Friday in 3,211 theaters, including $2M from Thursday previews. The hope is that it crawls to $12M-$13M for the weekend now. Oh boy.
The fourth weekend of Paramount’s Gladiator II is seeing $2.1M today, and a three-day total of $7.6M, -40%, for a running cume by Sunday of $145.7M. By that point, the Ridley Scott-directed sequel will be pacing 18% ahead of his original 2000 movie, which finaled at $187.7M.
Warner Bros/New Line’s The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, booked at 2,602 theaters, is seeing a Friday of $2M+ and an opening of $5M-$6M.
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FRIDAY AM: Sony’s $110M Spider-Man universe spinoff Kraven the Hunter collected $2M in previews Thursday night, while Warner Bros/New Line’s $30M+ anime movie Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim counted $625K.
Neither is expected to wow in their openings in a weekend that will be dominated again by Disney’s Moana 2, which is eyeing a 45% third-frame ease with around $28M.
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Kraven the Hunter is pacing like an R-rated male action movie, expected to do around $15M a la Amazon MGM Studios’ The Beekeeper, which did $2.4M in previews for a $16.5M opening. Lord of the Rings is looking at a mid-single-digit opening. Sony and Warner Bros put these 18-34 guy-demo movies in the pre-Christmas frame given each of their challenges and to benefit off the holiday multiple after Christmas. Both are seen as counterprogramming to upcoming family-laden frame of Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
Kraven the Hunter previews began at 2 p.m. at 2,842 locations. Reviews at 14% Rotten are as bad as Sony’s Marvel bomb from earlier this year, Madame Web, which did 11%. The Rotten Tomatoes audience score for Kraven the Hunter is slightly higher than Madame Web, 68% to 55%.
The director of LOTR: Rohirrim, Kenji Kamiyama, is respected in the anime space with credits including the 2017 Gkids feature Napping Princess, the Ghost in the Shell TV series plus an episode of Disney+’s Star Wars: Visions as well as 13 episodes of Max’s Blade Runner: Black Lotus.
Among regular films in release, Universal’s Wicked continued to beat Moana 2 daily Monday-Thursday span, despite the sequel beating the Broadway musical on the weekends.
Wicked made $3M on Thursday to Moana 2‘s $2.2M. Why is that? Essentially, kids are in school during the week, which is why Moana 2 makes a comeback on the weekends. Wicked‘s weekdays are full of adult women. I’m told that once we get into the Christmas break period, we’ll see Moana 2 closing the gap with Wicked on a daily basis.
Wicked ends its third week with $50.8M with a total of $336.5M, while Moana 2 grossed $62.8M for a running cume of $310.8M.
