The 12 Days of Box Office: Day 1

By David Mumpower

December 23, 2016

I hope he says All Right All Right.

New at BOP:
Share & Save
Digg Button  
Print this column
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.




Advertisement



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.


Continued:       1       2       3

     


 
 

Need to contact us? E-mail a Box Office Prophet.
Thursday, October 31, 2024
© 2024 Box Office Prophets, a division of One Of Us, Inc.