Hello everyone,
BOX OFFICE: Warner Bros had a not-so-great holiday weekend but they did have the top 3 movies at the domestic box office. #1 was “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” with approx. $38 million (including Christmas Day Monday) and $27 million (3-day). “Wonka” was #2 with approx. $28 million (4-day) and $18 million (3-day) for a total domestic of approx. $86 million. The 3rd was “The Color Purple” which opened on Christmas Day so it made $0 (3-day) but $18.15 million on Christmas Day. Overall, the total domestic weekend made approx. $138 million for the 4-day which is the lowest weekend of the last few years except for 2020 during the pandemc. Last years total for 4-day (including Dec 26) was $142 million (led by “Avatar The Way of Water with $63 million), 2021 3-day was $143 million (led by Spider-Man No Way Home with $84 million), in 2019 the nearest holiday weekend was Dec 27-29 which made $197 million (led by “Star Wars Episode 9 – The Rise of Skywalker with $72 million). This years holiday weekend had an even lower overall weekend than 2018 when the first “Aquaman” came out with $67 million over 4-days and an overall weekend of $291 million over 4 days.
For the Christmas Day openings, Warner Bros must have been very happy with “The Color Purple” since it had the 2nd highest Christmas Day opening EVER with $18.15 million, It’s just above another musical – Les Misérables – which made $18.11 million in 2012 but below “Sherlock Holmes” which made $24.6 million in 2009. The other Christmas Day releases were the George Clooney directed “The Boys in the Boat” which made $5.71 million and the Michael Mann directed “Ferrari” which made $2.88 million.
WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: Worldwide the “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” did much better than domestically making $80 million in foreign countries for approx. $108 million worldwide for the 3 day weekend. Meanwhile, “Wonka” made another $33 million in foreign countries so it’s worldwide total zoomed up to $255 million.
AWARD NEWS: I’ve always disagreed with the nominations for award shows. They’re basically telling people who don’t watch most movies “You don’t have to see ALL the movies, just see these movies nominated” it’s also telling people who see a lot of movies and may already have some personal favorites “The movie you thought was the best of the year wasn’t nominated so forget it and pick one of these”. Now, they’ve taken it a step further. They released a “shortlist” for some of the categories. There are 15 movies on the list for International Feature, Documentary Feature, Original Song, Music Score, and all 3 “short” categories – documentary short, animated short, and live action short. Ten movies were on the list for sound, visual effects, and makeup & hairstyling. “Barbie” had the most shortlist mentions with 5 which includes 3 in the original song category. So, now some people who nominate movies don’t have to watch ALL the movie of this year.
With about 2 weeks left before the award show airs, the Golden Globes awards announced they selected comedian Jo Koy. If you don’t know him, he had one of the highest grossing comedy tours this year.
OTHER NEWS: The BIG NEWS of last week was that Paramount and Warner Bros were supposedly having “very early conversations” about MERGING THE TWO STUDIOS. There were a lot of good comments and bad comments about the possible merger. Apparently, the stock market didn’t like the news because both companies’ stocks dropped. Some news have nicknamed it “Warnermount” but I personally prefer “War-Par-Disc”. Sounds like something from a sci-fi movie.
Last week I mentioned that Apple selected Sony Pictures to handle the theatrical release of two of it’s 2024 movies. Some people were saying the movies will come out in the first half of 2024, but they won’t. The announced that the George Clooney/Brad Pitt movie “Wolfs” release date is Sept 20, 2024 and the Scarlett Johansson/Channing Tatum previously titled “Project Artemis” (there will be a new title forthcoming according to the announcement) will be released July 12, 2024.
LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR….
You know that someone somewhere thought about this. Being snowed in together doesn’t always mean that one person will go crazy and try to kill the other.
LOS ANGELES FILM REVIEW 