The 12 Days of Box Office: Day 1
By David Mumpower
December 23, 2016
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Anyway, let’s go over the basics for those of you that are new to the process. This time of year is critical to the bottom line of Hollywood. Oh, movie studios will find a way to make phantom claims about record revenue, just as they always do, but the box office period around December 20th – January 3rd is the biggest of the year. Every major title in release will perform as if it’s either Friday or Saturday. That’s because the only true component of theater attendance that matters is availability. When potential movie-goers have the free time to watch a film in a theater, they enjoy the activity.
The only fluctuation is in calendar configuration. That’s because some national holidays fall on a set day of the week each year, but Christmas and New Year’s Day do not. The result of this scheduling quirk is that some days are better than others with regards to the overall box office performance of the top 10/12. And some years have such atrocious calendar configurations that all titles in release wind up artificially deflated in box office.
Since this is 2016, the year America chose dystopia, you can guess how this calendar configuration stacks up.
As I’ve said many times before, the worst thing that can happen is holidays like July 4th, Christmas Eve, and New Year’s Eve to fall on Saturday. That’s because these holidays are ones where consumers tend to go out, travel, or spend time with their families. 2016 is a double-whammy in that most December releases are disappointing to begin with, and now they’re going to suffer through a horrific Saturday. But I’m getting ahead of myself.
What’s important for now is that the calendar configuration abbreviates the box office windfall for all titles in release. Most companies will give employees the choice of either Friday or Monday as their vacation day. That’s good for this week, but it means that after January 2nd, the world goes right back to the way it was. Box office for that Monday will be solid, but it won’t seem as otherworldly since it’s a work night. In other words, studios enjoy fewer days of holiday inflation this year. That’s going to leave a mark.
Due to the compressed holiday season, the pre-Christmas money train isn’t as lucrative. Each extra inflationary day is found money to studios, and they’re missing out on as many as three this cycle. Still, the underlying premise applies. Everything in release is getting a bump right now.
How big is the bump? Let’s use Moana as an example. Nothing says holiday movie season like an animated classic from Disney. And Moana has torn up the box office since its release. Through last Sunday, the tale of a heroic island “not a princess” had grossed $162.9 million. A paltry $5.5 million of that total came from weekdays last week. Let’s contrast that to this week’s total. Moana grossed almost as much on Monday and Tuesday, $5.4 million, as it did the entirety of last Monday-Thursday. Yesterday alone, it gained $2.6 million, which is the most it earned on a non-holiday weekday since November 29th.
Films obviously aren’t supposed to work like that. They depreciate over time, burning off box office in the process. During the period of December 18th - January 2nd this year, it’ll work somewhat differently. And we’re not up to the good times yet. Those come next week when many North Americans have the whole week off.
While I’ll have plenty of points of discussion in the coming days, let’s stick with the basics on day one. We’re going to run through the important films in the top 10, comparing in-release titles to their prior Thursday performances when possible. This methodology will give you the best possible understanding of the Twelve Days of Box Office.
Finishing in first place is Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, the first standalone film in the seminal science fiction franchise. It’s going to dominate the conversation over the next few days as the unquestioned behemoth in North American theaters. Alas, its Thursday discussion is a bit pointless since last Thursday didn’t technically have an official box office total. Disney grafted that into Friday as well. Even if we used the Thursday total that we know it earned, $29 million, that’s still going to skew the picture as it was opening day for a Star Wars movie. Frontloading doesn’t frontload more frontloadedly than that.
All that matters for now is that we have a baseline for Rogue One moving forward. It earned $16.8 million on Thursday, a gain of 12% from Wednesday. That’s important in and of itself since Thursday is supposed to be the worst box office day of the week. Rogue One is sitting at $222 million after a week in theaters, which sounds dazzling as long as we don’t compare it to Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Last year at this time, Star Wars fans had already purchased $390.9 million in tickets for the movie that they’d spent their childhood dreaming about. We’ll come back to Rogue One in coming days, especially in the holiday Weekend Wrap-Ups.
Second place went to Sing, the Universal animated musical that debuted the day before yesterday. After starting with $11 million, it fell only 13% to $9.6 million, bringing its two-day total to a solid $20.6 million. It’s going to be another hit for the team that introduced the world to Despicable Minions. Sing follows a pattern that the films in second and third place follow, too. Passengers and Assassin’s Creed joined it in starting their box office runs on Wednesday. Both of them performed better on day one than day two, an ordinary phenomenon at this time of year. It’s primarily important since these are the only three films in the top ten that declined on Thursday. Everything that was already in release enjoyed the Twelve Days bump.
As for Passengers and Assassin’s Creed, the news is less good. Passengers can at least say that it won the battle on Thursday, pulling ahead with $3.2 million to Assassin’s Creed’s $2.9 million, but the latter film still leads overall by a narrow margin of $7.5 million to $7.3 million. Given that AC (I can’t bring myself to call it Creed since there’s already a superior film with that title) cost “nearly $200 million” according to the president of Ubisoft, despite how Fox downplays the number now, it’s in a world of hurt. The same isn’t quite true of Passengers, which cost “only” $110 million. Still, with $7.3 million after two days, it probably hasn’t even paid for Jennifer Lawrence’s salary yet. The two films should battle back and forth over the next few days, but the brutal truth is that Sing’s the only Christmas week release with box office relevance. And I say that as someone who was more excited about Passengers than Rogue One.
Moana rounds out the top five, doubling its total from $1.3 million last Thursday (when it was in first place, by the way) to $2.6 million yesterday. Sixth and seventh place go to Office Christmas Party and Collateral Beauty. The holiday Hangover wannabe earned almost exactly $10,000 more yesterday than last Thursday, which is actually a strong demonstration of the Twelve Days phenomenon. It should have been crazy-frontloaded. Collateral Beauty isn’t up for analysis yet since it was the sacrificial lamb that debuted with Rogue One last week.
Two of the final three movies in the top ten are difficult to evaluate just yet. We’ll start with the easy one, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them. The non-Harry Potter prequel (*wink*) finished in eighth place with $838,125. Last Thursday, when it was in third place, it managed only $764,434. It’s drinking from the Fountain of Youth during the holidays and will run like clockwork into the first few days of 2017.
Ninth and 10th place go to La La Land and Manchester-by-the-Sea. The latter film was technically in theaters last Thursday, but it was only exhibited in 366 venues, making its $331,826 fairly impressive. Yesterday, it earned significantly more, $676,337, but its per-location average fell Thursday over Thursday from $907 to $561. That’s still a great one-day average for a smaller film, but in the interest of honesty about the Twelve Days and box office behavior, I wanted to highlight the difference.
La La Land isn’t even a comparison yet since it was only in five theaters at this time last weekend. Suffice to say that $683,888 is great for a film in only 200 theaters, and that shiny per-location average of $3,419 is actually the second highest in the top ten, trailing only Rogue One…and not by that much. The latest Star Wars offering had a per-location average of $4,035 yesterday. La La Land is doing nothing to dispel its status as an Oscar frontrunner thus far.