WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING JANUARY 19, 2025
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. Mufasa: The Lion King–$48m / $588m worldwide
2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$35m /$420m ww
3. Moana 2–$20m / $1,010b ww
4. Nosferatu–$20m / $156m ww
5. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–$19m / $115m ww
6. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera–$16m / $36m ww
7. Wolf Man–$15m worldwide debut
8. One of Them Days–$14m ww debut
9. Wicked–$11m / $709m ww
10. Big World–$11m / $103m ww
11. Honey Money Phony–$11m / $52m ww
12. A Complete Unknown–$10m / $61m ww
13. Conclave–$7m / $76m ww
14. Gladiator II–$4m / $459m ww
15. Paddington in Peru–$4m / $60m ww
16. Babygirl–$3m / $31m ww
17. Harbin–$3m / $30m ww
18. Better Man–$3m / $13m ww
19. The Brutalist–$3m / $6m ww
20. Fake Dad–$3m / $5m ww
21. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–$2m / $50m ww
22. The Prosecutor–$2m / $36m ww
23. Finist. The First Warrior–$2m / $22m ww
24. Hot Pot Artist aka Huo Guo Yi Shu Jia –$2m / $6m ww
25. The Firefighters–$1m / $25m ww
26. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim–$1m / $21m ww
27. Homestead–$1m / $20m ww
28. The Last Showgirl–$1m / $3m ww
29. Game Changer–??
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
Some people are now calling Mufasa a "sleeper" hit. Umm, no $200mb Disney film can be called a sleeper, especially a threequel to two movies that each grossed more than $1b worldwide. Yes, it opened lower than expected in North America. But it opened during the holiday season from Christmas to New Year's when every day plays like a Saturday because people traditionally flock to the movies, especially family films like Mufasa. That's why I don't look at just North American box office but worldwide box office. (And the box office for all seven days, not just the weekend, a bizarre practice everyone else still follows.)
Worldwide, Mufasa: The Lion King opened at #1 with $122m. Its second week? Mufasa grossed $206m worldwide. Third week? $148m. Those are not the grosses of a sleeper.
I wouldn't say Conclave or A Complete Unknown are sleepers either. They've got legs, though. Conclave is still bringing in bucks, proving a force at the box office (which seemed obvious from opening weekend) and the Oscar race (which I thought less likely because the film was meh). The Bob Dylan biopic ticked up this week from $9m to $10m, exactly what you want in an Oscar hopeful geared towards adults. Word of mouth is clearly great, it should get plenty of Oscar love (though maybe not Best Director?) and adults are turning out. If it turns on more people to Bob Dylan's great music, all the better.
Oh and the streaming miniseries turned blockbuster film Moana 2 crossed $1 billion worldwide. If nothing else, Bob Iger gets credit for pushing it into theatrical. It and Red One are perfect arguments for why any streamer spending $100m+ on a movie is crazy not to give them wide releases in theatrical with big windows. In the case of Moana 2, they're printing money. In the case of Red One, theatrical was essentially a worldwide marketing campaign that paid for itself and set the movie up for massive success on Amazon's Prime. My gosh, if the movie does really week next holiday season and proves likely to be a perennial, I'll bet in 2026 we see a sequel greenlit.
Moana 2 is the 54th film in history to gross $1 billion worldwide. Soon, the Top 100 Films of All Time list will be renamed The Billionaire's Club. How soon? If we generate four more each year, we'll get to The Billionaire's Club by 2035. Just ten years. Probably sooner. What movies in 2025 could hit the mark? Well, Avatar: Fire and Ash is a given, plus almost certainly Jurassic World: Rebirth (the last three films have all grossed that much) and Superman. Outside possibilities include The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Thunderbolts*, Zootopia 2 (what took them so long?) and even the live action remakes of Lilo & Stitch and How To Train Your Dragon. No, people are not remotely tired of comic book movies or sequels. And surely one of them will prove a big enough hit, so that makes four more likely movies grossing $1 billion. Or in the case of Avatar: Fire and Ash, easily $2 billion.
I saw Nosferatu, Nickel Boys and the reissue of Interstellar last week. Nosferatu and Nickel Boys were both mightily impressive on a technical level. I found Lily-Rose Depp terrific in a very difficult role. But overall, the 1922 Nosferatu remains far creepier. It just didn't get under my skin. I thought the lead in Nickel Boys was weak. I didn't like his vocal performance long before I even saw the actor. (The film is shot from the point of view of one character for much of the film, so we hear him long before we see him.) However, I think costar Brandon Wilson is very talented. As for Interstellar, I found it a puzzle box, a la Inception. Happy to see it once but doubt I'd ever watch it again and it's not match for Dunkirk, which remains my favorite Christopher Nolan film by far.
NOTE: One movie fell off my box office radar. The Indian action-drama Game Changer opened to $31m last week. This week? I can't get any update. By all accounts it collapsed at the Indian box office. But even a 90% drop worldwide would mean it still made $3m. I'll update when numbers appear.
NOTES
mb = a film's budget in millions of US dollars; ww = worldwide
1. Mufasa: The Lion King–$200mb
2. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$120mb
3. 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.
4. Nosferatu–$50mb for Robert Eggers, acclaimed director of The Witch, The Lighthouse and The Northman. That had his biggest budget and was not a commercial success. I saw him as more of an arthouse guy. But backers stuck with him, gave him a big budget and a starry cast for a remake of Nosferatu, which I guess is classier than remaking Dracula but still a hard sell I thought. And on Christmas Day? That's counter-programming I was not behind. Happily, I was wrong and Eggers looks more like the next Peter Jackson/Guillermo Del Toro than a guy given big budgets too fast or for the wrong projects. Good for him!
5. Octopus With Broken Arms aka Wu Sha 3 (Manslaughter 3)–Chinese drama about businessman's daughter kidnapped from his home.
6. Den of Thieves 2: Pantera–$40mb for Gerard Butler action flick.
7. Wolf Man–$25mb
8. One of Them Days–$14mb. It's always good to gross your budget during a film's opening week. So yea for producer Issa Rae and this comedy starring Keke Palmer and SZA. (What a week for SZA! Her movie opens well and she makes my list of The 250 Best Albums of the 21st Century...So Far.
9. Wicked–$150mb for each part, so $300mb total plus beaucoup marketing. It's a big movie!
11. Honey Money Phony–Chinese rom-com about young woman suddenly burdened with debt who falls for a (very handsome) young con man. Will he go straight for her or teach her his wicked ways so she can get out from under this financial disaster?
12. A Complete Unknown–$60mb+ for this Bob Dylan biopic? That's a lot of money for a film about Dylan going electric at Newport. I mean, I want to see it but then I'm a Dylan fanatic. Off to a very good start and star Timotheé Chalamet is sure to get an Oscar nomination, so it should keep going. But $180m worldwide seems highly unlikely to me, if not impossible. (Do other countries give a toss about this? Is Chalamet a big enough draw for this story? I doubt it.) I'm glad it was made, but it was made for too much. Like Gladiator II, this will be seen as a commercial success, but it's not.
13. Conclave–a reported $20mb for this Vatican thriller means this is a hit. It's at $60m and still going strong, with a boost from potential Oscar noms. I do not see the point in putting it on PVOD and flooding the market with bootlegs while potentially harming box office. This is exactly the sort of film that can play and play in theaters.
14. 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? No, it does not. This is the sort of film that everyone thinks of as a hit, but actually didn't deliver. The talk of Gladiator 3 is nonsense. Maybe many years from now they'll use the name to launch a new franchise, but this is the end for now.
15. 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.
16. Babygirl–$20mb for this Nicole Kidman sexy drama about a powerful businesswoman finding her kink with a younger, dominating man..her intern, no less! No milk was harmed in the making of this movie.
17. Harbin–A South Korean historical drama set in the early 1900s about rebels fighting against the Japanese occupation of Korea. When one rebel leader shows mercy to Japanese prisoners and his men pay the price, he vows to redeem himself by assassinating the first Prime Minister of Japan. So this one will probably not have a good run in Japan.
18. Better Man–$110mb!!! I just gasped when I saw the budget. Oh dear. I love the craziness of this movie. But that's a LOT of money for such a nutty idea. And forget the nutty idea. It's a musical biopic about an artist whose music I really like but has virtually no profile outside the UK. For heaven's sake, Queen is one of the biggest acts in the world and their biopic cost literally half of this one. Better Man would have been a big gamble at $30mb.
19. The Brutalist–$10mb; Adrien Brody in this architect-as-hero period drama.
21. Detective Conan: Crossroad in the Ancient Capitol (2003)–China reissue of Japanese animated franchise entry. Film had $32m before reissue in China. I mean, they keep making them so I assume they're profitable.
26. The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim–per Screendollar, the budget is $30mb for this animated prequel to The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings movies. Even at that price, it's a flop. Taken solely from minor footnotes in the novels, it was a gamble but a smart one. An animated film won't be compared to Peter Jackson's masterpiece. (See: the TV series.) And it's not retelling stories we've already heard. (See: superhero movies that go back to the well by redoing an origin story for Superman, Spiderman, et al.) Unfortunately, you still have to be good. The trailer I saw disappointed and audiences are not responding. A pity.
27. Homestead–faith-based post-apocalyptic drama from Angel Studios. A survivalist fantasy. Based on a series of ten, poorly reviewed novels.
28. The Last Showgirl–$2mb for Pamela Anderson's performance as Vegas showgirl whose revue suddenly closes after 30 years. Not so fast, Demi, says Anderson.
NOTE: Game Changer–$45mb for Indian-Telugu political action film w new politico uncovering corruption and kicking ass. Opened to $32m, fell hard in India but surely it made some money in its second week.
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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