WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 1, 2024
A film's gross for the last seven days, followed by its total worldwide gross. I begin with data from
Comscore and then pull from every other source available.
1. Moana 2–$389m worldwide debut
2. Wicked–$196m / $360m ww
3. Gladiator II–$99m / $320m ww
4. Red One–$33m / $149m ww
5. Her Story aka Hao Dong Xi--$33m / $54m ww
6. Venom: The Last Dance–$12m / $468m ww
7. Terrifier 3–$7m / $94m ww
8. Heretic–$7m / $39m ww
9. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever–$6m / $32m ww
10. The Wild Robot–$5m / $322m ww
11. To Gather Around aka Sheng Quan Zai Wo aka Brave New World–$5m / $26m ww
12. Hello, Love, Again–$5m / $22m ww
13. Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.–$5m / $10m ww
14. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3–$4m / $49m ww
15. Conclave–$4m / $35m ww
16. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II–$3m / $1.345b ww
17. Crayon Shin-Chan: Our Dinosaur Diary–$3m / $33m ww
18. Maharaja–$3m / $16m ww
19. Hidden Face–$3m / $5m ww
20. Good Luck–$3m ww debut
21. Smile 2–$2m / $138m ww
22. Amaran–$2m / $38m ww
23. Paddington in Peru–$2m / $33m ww
24. We Live In Time–$2m / $32m ww
25. Anora–$2m / $24m ww
26. The Young Couple Apartment–$2m / $16m ww
27. I'm Still Here–$2m / $8m ww
28. A Poem In Love–$1.6m ww debut
29. The Substance–$1m / $55m ww
30. Singham Again–$1m / $46m ww
31. Cesium Fallout–$1m / $36m ww
32. A Real Pain–$1m / $7m ww
33. Small Things Like These–$1m / $6m ww
NOTE: Last week Kanguva grossed $6m (for a total of $15m ww). This week it's disappeared off the chart. That seems too abrupt a drop, so I'll keep my eye out for more info on how this film is doing. Don't be surprised if it pops back on. Summary: Kanguva–a Tamil action film reportedly $35-40mb. Hugely elaborate via the trailer, with two timelines: one a millennia ago and another in the present. Whatever's going on, our hero is not a reluctant warrior.
Bold: movies that have or likely will triple their reported budgets. That's my standard for a movie being a box office hit from theatrical alone. Many films will be profitable for a studio even if they don't triple their reported budget, but it's a good marker to indicate a big hit.
ANALYSIS
Wow. The 5 day Thanksgiving box office is massive; the biggest Thanksgiving weekend and one of the top-grossing weekends of all time. In five days, movies grossed $425m, probably 5% of the entire year's box office in North America. This makes nonsense of those saying movie going is dead, people just want to stream, young people can't be bothered anymore, the pandemic killed off movies, etc etc etc. All nonsense.
As we've seen all year long, when a movie comes out people want to see, they flock to the movies. And this week we saw three movies clean up at the box office. All three are wide-appealing films to everyone. You really can't make that much money that quickly just by drawing in teen boys or pre-teen girls. Nope. And two of them–Wicked and Moana 2–clearly target women. So this isn't even about Barbenheimer counter-programming. (That's where Gladiator II steps in, though it's still a long way from $750m and profitability.) They're just popular movies.
Three thoughts.
One, audiences are back (and always have been). No, a freakish worldwide lockdown did not end a 100 year+ habit of going to the movies.
Two, the fun won't last. December is pretty threadbare. I'm personally excited by The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim, but that's me. Kraven The Hunter might astonish with Venom-like numbers. Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 could wildly over-perform. (Mufasa is Disney but it's tracking at $50-60m for North America. It would need to be stunning popular to power box office through the final week of 2024. Maybe Nosferatu will open to $150m? Nah.
Because of the lockdown and the strikes, studios are releasing 25% fewer movies than usual. With 25% fewer movies, I expect roughly 25% lower box office. So 2024 will be right in line with the movie-going of 2016-2019 if this year's box office hits $8 billion. (Ideally, $8.3b, but that would mean $1 billion in 30 days and that ain't happening. $700m? That's possible, if we get lucky.) And when box office hits $8 billion, everyone should recognize movie-going is as popular as ever. If studios release all sorts of movies (big, medium, and small; romantic comedies and dramas and comedies and arty and offbeat and would-be blockbusters) audiences will show up and 2025 and 2026 will return to pre-pandemic levels of $10b+. If you build it, people will come.
What the box office is desperately missing right now are more of the smaller films, romantic comedies and a Knives Out and all those tasty, mid-budget and low budget movies that can surprise. Conclave and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever feel like huge wins at $30m+. (And go, Anora!) Films like those are absolutely crucial. We won't get back to $11b annual grosses in North America without a lot more movies like them.
Three, Moana 2 was a made for TV miniseries till Bob Iger switched gears. Full credit to him, though with Moana racking up enormous numbers on Disney+, why anyone didn't rush to greenlight a movie sequel (along with the unnecessary live action remake) is beyond me. Iger's move wasn't so genius; the original decision was just so dumb. I'm sure the budget for the six episode series was smaller, but Moana 2 cost a reported $150mb. (Really, with Dwayne Johnson on board after the first made so much?) Of course, Red One cost $250mb and is underperforming. So when to stream and when to release a film theatrically?
Here's my rule of thumb. If you're spending $100mb or more on a movie, you should give it a full-on, theatrical release. If you don't think a movie costing $100mb is worth releasing theatrically or might face plant and ruin its value, you shouldn't be making it in the first place. Sure, movies will fail. But Red One will hit streaming after a worldwide marketing campaign and it's having decent legs. You maybe won't make a sequel unless it explodes online, but it was the right call, just like Moana 2. Besides, releasing a bad big budget movie straight to streaming won't make it more appealing to anyone.
NOTE: I'm leaving my note here which appears in every analysis because it bears repeating. Here's a reminder about the annual box office. Studios are releasing about 25% fewer movies in 2024 than they did during the 2016-2019 pre-COVID era. That means we can reasonably expect the annual North American box office to reach about 25% less than that era's average box office. So look for about $8.3b for the year and call that a return to business as usual. Currently, North American box office is at $6.3b, with Thanksgiving and Christmas to go. Pump up the releases of all types of movies in 2025 and we have every reason to expect box office back in $10b-$11b territory.
NOTES
mb = a film's budget in millions of US dollars; ww = worldwide
1. Moana 2–Is the budget lower since it was intended for tv, at first? Or higher because they had to rethink everything? Disney says it cost $150mb, just like the original. You can bet Dwayne Johnson gets more than his share of coconuts, but that won't matter with a hit like this.
2. Wicked–$150mb for each part, so $300mb total plus beaucoup marketing. It's a big movie!
3. Gladiator II–$250mb for Ridley Scott sword and sandals epic. It needs $750m worldwide for me to call it a hit from theatrical alone but $600m would be just fine. It's got swords. It's got sandals. Does it have legs?
4. Red One–Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans action/Xmas comedy. A budget reportedly up to $250mb.
5. Her Story aka Hao Dong Xi --Chinese drama, literally translated as "Nice One." Single mom moves in with another single gal; adventures ensue. I don't like calling film's hits without some reporting on its budget. But I can't imagine this type of film costing even $20m, so it's a hit!
6. Venom: The Last Dance–$120m reported budget. With Venom 1 hitting $850m and Venom 2 at just $500m, this is an old school franchise where each new entry seeing less and less interest. They were right to call it a day after #3, clearly. And yet...it's just matching the $500m of #2, but given the creative collapse here, they're getting lucky.
7. Terrifier 3 -- a $2mb! Success, thy name is cheap horror films.
8. Heretic–reported $10mb horror flick starring Hugh Grant as a gent more than willing to invite two Mormons into his home to debate religious beliefs.
13. Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin.–a modestly budgeted film about the anti-Nazi martyr which is denounced by his descendants and experts on the life of Bonhoeffer. They say the film distorts his life and teachings to promote Christian nationalism. While the Nazis accused and executed Bonhoeffer for involvement in the plot to assassinate Hitler, he had already been imprisoned and there's no evidence linking him to it. Showing him wielding a gun in the poster is one of many reasons the family and others have lambasted the film.
14. Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3–Indian/Hindi supernatural comedy about a fake ghostbuster. The budget is $18mb. Part 2 made $32m ww total so this needs to do almost twice as much to be a hit from box office alone.
15. Conclave–a reported $20mb for this Vatican thriller means they're likely to have a hit when all is said and done. It's at $35m and still going strong, with a boost from potential Oscar noms, assuming they don't rush it to streaming.
16 Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part I–the gang is back in action, at least in China where all eight Potter movies are being reissued, one a week. Interest was mild with a handful of early chapters grossing about $5m. Now we're at the two part finale and despite very mild competition, this only grossed $3m.
17. Crayon Shin-Chan: Our Dinosaur Diary–A Japanese animated movie that opened there in August and then Hong Kong and Vietnam where it grossed at least $20m and yet it NEVER appeared on my radar! Japan is a market like India where indies don't bother to report grosses to international bodies or companies like Comscore. It's only because the film opened in China and that distributor reported the grosses that we're finding out about it. No idea on the budget, but this isn't Disney or even Miyazaki. So a very good gross, though I'm loathe to call movies hits when I don't have any budget to consider. ($22m before opening in China.)
18. Maharaja–Indian/Tamil action film; grossed $13m before opening in China
20. Good Luck–Indian/Hindi comedy in which 75 year old grandmother might be pregnant!
23. Paddington in Peru–$50mb? I'm just guessing. (That's sort of midpoint between the original and Paddington 2.) Sadly, three times is not the charm artistically for this once-perfect franchise.
24. We Live In Time–Andrew Garfield/Florence Pugh drama about a decades-spanning romance. Looks like another sleeper success for director John Crowley a la Brooklyn.
25. Anora–no budget for Sean Baker's latest. But since the most he ever got before is $2mb, I'm assuming this isn't that much. It's opened pretty wide already, so I guess a real platform throughout awards season won't happen? A shame not to let this play into March 2025 where Conan O'Brien can give Anora her flowers. Still, it's already doubling The Florida Project, which made $11m off a $1mb.
26. The Young Couple Apartment–Chinese film, perhaps a remake of 1987 Chinese film about lives of six young couples all living in same apartment building.
27. I'm Still Here–A reported $1.5mb. Director Walter Salles drama about a Brazilian woman searching for her missing husband during the dictatorship of Brazil that lasted more than 20 years. Brazil's Oscar hopeful enjoyed acclaim and awards at Venice.
28. A Poem In Love–Chi film? No info on what this might be.
29. The Substance–$18mb reported for the Demi Moore body horror comeback. So I guess despite
all the back and forth on its grosses, this really is a winner now.
30. Singham Again–Indian/Hindi action film w a $42mb. Fifth in Cop Universe franchise. Last film made $32m. This budget is five times bigger than Singham Return's $8mb.
31. Cesium Fallout–Hong Kong disaster flick starring Andy Lau. A radioactive leak threatens the island.
33. Small Things Like These–low budget Cillian Murphy drama about worker faced with knowledge of nuns treating young women abusively. Backed by Ben Affleck/Matt Damon production company.
THE CHART AND HOW IT IS COMPILED
This column is a week by week tracking of box office around the world. It is compiled by pulling from every possible source: ComScore, Box Office Mojo, Variety, Hollywood Reporter, Deadline, charts for countries like China and India and South Korea, individual stories in trade or general interest newspapers, Wikipedia and anyone else discussing box office.
ComScore Weekly Global Box Office Chart
The weekly charts contain the total gross for every movie in theaters around the world during the last seven days. If a movie opens on a Thursday, we include all the box office from Thursday through Sunday. If it opens on a Tuesday night, we cover all six days. If it opens on a Sunday (as some movies do in India or wherever, depending on holidays), then we include the box office for that one day. If a movie was released before the current week, we include the box office for all seven days. Why ignore the box office from Monday through Thursday, as most charts do when tallying the latest weekend and focusing on new releases?
How do we arrive at this number? We take the total worldwide box office we have for a movie, subtract from it the previous week's total worldwide box office...and that's how much it made during the past seven days. Naturally, territories and movies sometimes fall through the cracks but we are as up to date as we can be, given our dependence on other outlets for the basic info.
First, I list box office on every film we can from around the world. Any movie grossing at least US $1 million will be on here if we get info on it. Then I give some thoughts on the box office overall and individual films. That's followed by notes where I give info on each movie, with a focus on films not from Hollywood. So Despicable Me 4 you know. But a small Korean comedy or French drama? That I'll identify for you as best I can.
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