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Fourth place goes to The Last Showman, the Hugh Jackman/Zendaya/Zac Efron musical about P.T. Barnum. From 20th Century Fox (er, Disney? I guess not yet), the prestige picture without critical support earned $8.6 million from Friday-to-Sunday. Since debuting on Wednesday, The Last Showman has earned $13.2 million, and since people do seem to enjoy musicals over the holiday season, it will probably fare okay. With that said, it’s got to be less than the studio was hoping for. They’ve spent a lot of money and effort marketing this one.

Also from Fox is Ferdinand, the underachieving CGI animated film featuring the WWE’s John Cena as the primary voice actor. The casting department had to greatly overestimate his appeal to the general public, or perhaps they never actually tuned in to a show to hear the massive boos he receives despite supposedly being a good guy and fan favorite (ha ha). It might manage to stay just ahead of Coco through the holidays, but given the varied reception for the two family films, I’ll expect Coco to move ahead in a few days. With two weekends under its belt, the Blue Sky production has now earned a lukewarm $26.5 million.

That brings us to Coco, now in its fifth weekend. It earned a tidy $5.2 million, down 48% from last weekend. That decline is largely because of Christmas Eve falling on Sunday, which sucks the life out of movie theaters – and especially family films. Still Coco has now accumulated $161.3 million from domestic venues, and adds an awesome $325 million overseas. Disney/Pixar will be plenty happy with that, especially as Coco will have plenty more to earn in the coming days.

Director Alexander Payne is an acquired taste, one that some people have never acquired. His latest film, Downsizing, is struggling thanks to middling reviews and extremely poor audience reaction. With $4.6 million yesterday, it’s going to fall off the radar quickly. Paramount is going to be happy to eke out every dollar they can over these next several days, because audiences are not into Downsizing.

On the other end of the awards bait release spectrum is Darkest Hour, the Winston Churchill biopic that has gotten world-class attention thanks to the performance of Gary Oldman. A lot of people feel that Oldman is long overdue for an Academy Award, and with his transformation into this historical figure, he has emerged as a front-runner if not favorite. Focus expanded the film to 806 venues this weekend, and the result was a 384% increase to $4.1 million. Overall, Darkest Hour has earned $7 million in North America and $5.4 million overseas. As awards wins and nominations start to roll in, I’d expect this one to gain a lot of traction.

What would happen if Owen Wilson and Ed Helms did a comedy together, featuring lots of familiar faces in cameo or expanded cameo roles, and no one came? Well, you’d have Father Figures, a painfully unfunny looking project that Warner Bros. advertised heavily for some reason. Maybe it’s because it was their only real hope for revenue during the holiday season. Whatever their thinking, Father Figures earned only $3.2 million in its first three days, and will quickly be passed over by stuff like The Shape of Water and holdover Wonder (also featuring Wilson) as people grow wise to its awfulness.

Finally, in tenth place we have The Shape of Water, the Fox Searchlight hopeful for a Best Picture nomination. Directed by Guillermo del Toro, the studio expanded the film to 726 venues and was rewarded with a three-day total of $3.1 million. That’s a 78% increase over last weekend and brings the film’s total up to $7.6 million. We’ll be talking about The Shape of Water a lot more in the upcoming awards season, I’m sure.

Overall, the top 12 movies earned $162.1 million, which is down a bit from last year when the top movies earned $171.2 million. Basically, that year-over-year decline can be attributed to one extra film opening in double digits last year. Otherwise, the results are pretty similar. We’ll continue to keep discussing the 12 Days of Box Office over the next several days, including tomorrow’s debut of All the Money in the World (and some limited releases/expansions).

Top Ten for Weekend of December 22-24, 2017
Rank	Film	Distributor	Estimated Gross ($)	Weekly Change	Running Total ($)
1	Star Wars: The Last Jedi	Walt Disney Co.	68.5	-69%	365.1
2	Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	Sony	34.0	New	50.6
3	Pitch Perfect 3	Universal	20.5	New	20.5
4	The Greatest Showman	20th Century Fox	8.6	New	13.2
5	Ferdinand	20th Century Fox	7.1	-47%	26.5
6	Coco	Walt Disney Co.	5.2	-48%	161.3
7	Downsizing	Paramount	4.6	New	4.6
8	Darkest Hour	Focus	4.1	+384%	7.0
9	Father Figures	Warner Bros.	3.2	New	3.2
10	The Shape of Water	Fox Searchlight	3.1	+78%	7.6
11	Wonder	Lionsgate	2.0	-62%	115.0
12	The Star	Sony	1.4	-21%	38.5

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