Ever since Star Wars: The Force Awakens launched its ongoing campaign to trample every conceivable box office record in film history, it’s been easy to forget that there are actually other movies in theaters right now besides Star Wars. Granted, none of them are even doing a third of what Star Wars is. In fact, the combined domestic gross of the other nine movies in the most recent box office top 10 is still $100 million shy of where Force Awakens currently stands. So, obviously your attention goes to Star Wars, but while it has been off in its own financial galaxy some notable other things have gone down at the box office:
China
The Chinese government released its official box office figures for 2015, reporting a year-end gross of $6.77 billion, a nearly 49% increase over the country’s gross in 2014. At that rate of growth, China’s long-predicted day as the world’s biggest box office market might come a little sooner than expected, possibly just a little over a year from now. The only thing that could stop China from overtaking North America to become the world’s leading film market by 2017 would be some kind of economic collapse, and that’s not going to…what do you mean the Chinese stock market plunged so hard this morning that the government stepped in and suspended trading for the rest of the day, but not before the country’s leading theater chains and film finance/production companies lost, on average, 10% of their market value? That doesn’t sound good.
Comedies Staying Strong
Daddy’s Home is similarly prospering as comedy counter-programming to Star Wars and the bunched up awards contenders. It’s up to $93m after 10 days. At this rate, in two weeks it will move past Ferrell/Wahlberg’s last movie, The Other Guys ($119m), and by the end of its run it will likely be one of the highest-grossing films of Will Ferrell’s career.
The Hateful Eight
Something to keep in mind: After Pulp Fiction, Tarantino’s next four movies averaged a domestic gross of $50m. It wasn’t until Inglorious Bastards ($120m) and Django Unchained ($162m) that his movies turned into megahits, and Hateful Eight is his first movie since 1997 to not open in at least 2,600 theaters immediately.
The Awards Contenders
Hustle and SLP enjoyed extra long theatrical runs due to word-of-mouth and their onslaught of awards nominations. That same fate might not be in the cards for Joy. People don’t seem to like it as much, and it’s not getting nearly as many nominations (or any, depending on which awards body you’re talking about). Instead, this year The Big Short is the one which is posting impressive week-to-week holds (it only declined 14% this weekend), and finding its audience through word-of-mouth and awards buzz.
Concussion posted the worst opening weekend of Will Smith’s career over Christmas, but it only declined 25% this past weekend. With an Oscar nomination for Smith inevitably around the corner, it will be interesting to see if this one sticks around, especially with the NFL playoffs about to start.
The Revenant and Anomalisa are both playing in just four theaters, posting typically nice-sounding per-theater-averages. Frankly, though, I don’t put much stock into those numbers anymore because in my years following box office statistics I’ve been burned far too often by analysts raving about per-theater-averages one weekend and then scratching their heads the next weekend when the movie expands wide and comes in under expectations. That being said, The Revenant is almost exactly mimicking American Sniper’s release strategy, thus providing us with an obvious reference point. Across its first two weekends, American Sniper amassed $2.2m whereas The Revenant is looking at $1.3m. So, when Revenant expands wide next weekend American Sniper‘s record for biggest opening weekend in January is under no threat of being broken.
A Couple of Notable Milestones
Disney, on the other hand, is stuck with the realization that Good Dinosaur will be the lowest-grossing Pixar movie of all-time, at least domestically. Pixar’s prior low-water mark had been A Bug’s Life ($162m).