Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: The news is saying “Wonka” had a “strong” start making approx. $39 million this weekend. However, that’s A LOT lower than the same weekend last year when “Avatar: The Way of Water” opening to almost $100 million more ($134 million) and it’s also lower than the “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” reboot movie which opened to $56 million in July of 2005. The bad news is that the movie accounts for more than half of ALL the domestic box office for this past weekend because no other movie made more than $6 million over the weekend. The total domestic box office for this past weekend was a low $75 million total. The best per screen average was the new limited release of “American Fiction” which opened on only 7 screens and made approx. $32 thousand per screen.
Since it doesn’t look like there’s a blockbuster movie that will come out in the final two weekends of the year (I don’t think “Migration”, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom”, or “The Color Purple” will be blockbusters), some news is talking about if the domestic box office will pass $9 billion for the year. Personally, I don’t think it will since it’s currently at $8.46 billion so it needs to make $440 million in the final 2 weeks of the year which includes 2 holiday weekends.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “Wonka” – which opened in a few other countries prior to this past weekend, made an additional $53 million this past weekend for an international total of $113 million and a worldwide box office total of approx. $152 million. Also, “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” made it past $300 million for its worldwide total this past weekend. Its total for domestic and international are even with approx. $150 million.
OTHER NEWS: Today Disney & Marvel announced it has fired actor Jonathan Majors after a jury decided he was guilty of reckless assault and harassment. They’ll need to recast the character the actor has already played Kang the Conquerer in the “Loki” TV series and the “Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” movie and is supposed to be a MAJOR villain in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. An upcoming Avengers movie scheduled to come out in 2026 is currently titled “Avengers: The Kang Dynasty”
This year, Apple worked with Paramount to release “Killers of the Flower Moon” and worked with Sony to release “Napoleon”. Apparently, they liked Sony better because they announced that Sony will handle the theatrical release of 2 of their movies in 2024. The first movie is the George Clooney/Brad Pitt spy movie “Wolfs” and the second is the Scarlett Johansson/Channing Tatum movie “Project Artemis”. Neither movie has a release date yet (although I wouldn’t be surprised if “Wolfs” has a trailer released to play with the upcoming movie George Clooney directed – “The Boys in the Boat”) but people are predicting both movies should come out sometime in the first half of 2024.
Little Bit of Humor:
The projector probably got the title after showing “Oppenheimer” all year.
(this is a real display in San Diego, Ca. According to reports, it’s the 2nd IMAX projector ever made. It was installed back in 1973 and ran until it was replaced by an IMAX Laser projector a couple years ago).
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 