WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE FOR WEEK ENDING DECEMBER 22, 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.
5. Gladiator II–$17m / $416m ww
6. Kraven The Hunter–$17m / $43m ww
7. The Last Dance–$10m / $40m ww
8. The Prosecutor–$10m / $18m ww
9. Pushpa 2: The Rule–$9m / $176m ww
10. Her Story aka Hao Dong Xi--$8m / $96m ww
11. Red One–$6m / $181m ww
12. Homestead–$6m ww debut
13. Jason Zhang Brilliance Tour–$6m ww debut
14. Conclave–$5m / $50m ww
15. The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim–$5m / $15m ww
16. The Firefighters–$5m / $17m ww
17. I Am What I Am 2–$3m / $8m ww
18. Paddington in Peru–$2m / $47m ww
19. Heretic–$2m / $45m ww
20. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever–$2m / $39m ww
21. Anora–$1m / $30m ww
22. Burning Star aka Gu Xing Ji Hua–$1m / $14m ww
23. I'm Still Here–$1m / $11m ww
24. Small Things Like These–$1m / $9m ww
25. Good Luck–$1m / $9m ww
26. Flow–$1m / $ 6m ww
27. Solo Leveling: Reawakening–$1m / $6m ww
28. Queer–$1m / $3m ww
NOTE: The Substance–$20m / $77m??
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
This week offers a great example of why "rankings" on this list of worldwide grosses don't matter. Mufasa is #1! It grossed TWICE as much as Sonic The Hedgehog 3, the other big new film debuting on the charts. Success for Mufasa! Except. Except for the little fact that Mufasa: The Lion King opened in more than 90% of the worldwide market (that is, in some 48 countries which accounted for about 90% of the worldwide box office). In contrast, Sonic The Hedgehog 3 opened in just four markets: North America, the United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway. They account for about 30% of the worldwide market. So Sonic has much more of the world still to come and it got much better reviews while Mufasa underperformed its tracking and got mixed to poor reviews. (Not that these crappy live action spin-offs of animated films depend on good reviews.) Oh and Sonic only cost $120mb to make while Mufasa cost a reported $200mb. So in about two minutes we'll be able to tag SH3 a smash hit from theatrical alone, while Mufasa will struggle to get there. It's gonna need great word of mouth and legs (or paws) through the end of the year.
That brings us to Red One. If you're a streamer and make a film that costs $100mb, I think you're crazy not to release it theatrically. Red One is a good example of a huge action film with a huge budget and big stars. Why wouldn't Amazon spend the money to give it a proper theatrical release? Well, it definitely flopped. The budget may have been $250mb and it only grossed $180m worldwide. Now it's come to streaming and instead of being tagged a loser and ignored by viewers, all that marketing muscle made it what Amazon claims is a hit. They say 50m viewers worldwide watched it (or part of it) in its first four days online. It's the same thing we saw in the Blockbuster video/DVD rental era. Movies would flop in theaters, but then people browsing for something to rent would see the film, remember the marketing so it dinged a bell, look at the stars and snap it up. This might drive cineastes mad, but there you go. Amazon agrees with me. That $180m gross and huge push paid for itself.
In Variety: Amazon MGM head of theatrical distribution Kevin Wilson hinted at the studio’s justification for spending big without requiring a lot of ticket sales in return, telling Variety in November, “Whether or not people like it, the value of these movies is different for our business model. … If we can put these movies out theatrically and cover our P&A [print and advertising] costs, why wouldn’t we? We’re getting a massive marketing campaign that’s being paid for before the film gets to streaming.”
Okay, they're RATHER have a huge box office hit, of course, just as Disney is filmed its miniseries for Moana 2 was repurposed into a theatrical film and has grossed some $800m and counting. But you can't have everything.
One other bit of business. Last week Pushpa 2: The Rule grossed $76m. This week it grossed...$9m? I can't see any reason why this smash hit should suddenly drop so hard. So I'll keep an eye on it, but no other info is available right now.
NOTE: 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 $7.9b, with 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. Mufasa: The Lion King–$200mb
2. 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.
3. Sonic The Hedgehog 3–$120mb
4. Wicked–$150mb for each part, so $300mb total plus beaucoup marketing. It's a big movie!
5. 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.
6. Kraven The Hunter–$120mb. Ouch.
9. Pushpa 2: The Rule–$60mb. The original Indian/Telugu film cost half as much and only grossed $46m. So the sequel cost more than the original movie's gross. But it doubled the original's entire gross in its first week. Originally, a chunk of the two films were shot at the same time, but they did significant reshoots, so just 10% came from the first go-round. Yes, it was the highest grossing Indian movie of 2021; yes it's one of the highest grossing Telugu films of all time. But even the lowest estimate of the original's budget is $23mb, so it wasn't a huge hit to begin with. I am puzzled. Are the economics different for Indian films? I wouldn't be surprised if the calculations were different. There are no reports of the first film being a particular hit on streaming or on demand etc, which might justify all this. I think it's another example of Indian films committing to a sequel before there's any demand. Indeed, this film was cut into two parts before the first release. A number of other films seem to be two-parters, which is a very rare thing in Hollywood but less so in India. Is it a good idea? I don't think so. And having said all that, it's off to an excellent start. Why? It's no better reviewed than the first. Maybe they got lucky but Indian studios should rethink all these two and three-parters.
10. 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!
16. The Firefighters–Korean drama with hot young newbie joining firefighter squad, only to butt heads with a legendary veteran.
17. I Am What I Am 2–Chinese animated film is a sequel to a 2021 animated action comedy. This time, a newcomer to Shanghai agrees to fight in a boxing/martial arts tournament to raise money for his ailing dad. It's a spiritual sequel to the first film, which was critically praised but only grossed $40m ww. In that film, a kid competes in a lion dancing competition while his ailing dad is in a coma.
18. 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.
19. 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.
20. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever–$10mb for this holiday faith-based film based on the gentle 1972 novel. It's a more religiousy A Christmas Story.
23. 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. One of the biggest Brazilian hits of all time in its home country.
24. 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. Lovely to see this small film chugging along. Presumably, the budget was very low and all are just happy to see the film was made and being seen. But who owns the negative? That's the piece of the puzzle that's missing from the coverage I read about Ben Affleck and Matt Damon's new production company.
25. Good Luck–Indian/Hindi comedy in which 75 year old grandmother might be pregnant!
26. Flow–A critically acclaimed Latvian animated film about a cat; no subtitles. It's been playing in Latvia and France and just now expanding in the US. Doing well via word of mouth, so I'm pretending it grossed $1m this week to acknowledge it going wider in the US. It's now grossed $6 worldwide.
28. Queer–$50mb. Yes, my jaw just dropped. Who the hell spent $50m to make Queer, an adaptation of a seedy William S. Burroughs novel (he never wrote any other type) about a down-on-his-luck older man becoming besotted with a younger man who can't be bothered with him, seemingly. I assumed it was a labor of love from star Daniel Craig and director Luca Guadagnino. I mean, $50m is bonkers for this sad, period drama. Bonkers. I mean, Call Me By Your Name cost $3.5m, caught lightning in a bottle with Timothée Chalamet and Armie Hammer and grossed an exceptional $43m. Surely that was the blueprint here? They just added a zero, I guess to the budget and their expectations. Challengers cost $55m and grossed $96m worldwide.
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.
What about when I blithely state a film has opened in TK% of the world? For example, I claim The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim opened in about 9% of the worldwide market. I long wanted to know how "wide" a movie has opened around the world. It's easy to know how wide a film opened in one country. In the US/Canada, a limited release might be two theaters or 20. A wide release used to mean 1000 theaters and now big movies easily open on 2000 or 3000 or even 4000 theaters. (We talk about theaters, not screens, since screen count can and does change daily or even hourly. A movie can play at one mulitplex and be on five screens or eight or one.) I really hated not knowing how many countries a movie had already opened in and how "big" those countries are in the worldwide market. So I got a list of the 20 top countries and how much of the worldwide box office they represented in 2019, the last typical year/ Those 20 countries accounted for 90% of the worldwide box office in 2019. For example, Australia was responsible for 2.13% of the $42.2 billion worldwide total in 2019. China was responsible for $22.04%. The 86 or so other countries outside the Top 20 represent well less than 1% and are equally weighted as representing just 0.116% of the total worldwide box office.
So, The Lord of the Rings: War of the Rohirrim opened in Spain (1.66%), Mexico (2.37%) and Brazil (also 1.66%) and 28 other countries (none major). The three big markets total 5.69% of the worldwide box office. (Roughly!) The other 28 countries (28 times 0.116%) account for 3.248%. So altogether the film has opened in 8.938% of the world, which I simplified as about 9%. This DOESN'T mean the film will make 90% more in other markets. A movie might open in China or Korea and do little or nothing anywhere else for various reason. Another movie might open in France and prove a worldwide smash. All this number is meant to indicate is how much of the world a movie has opened in already. If it's a big hit and might play elsewhere, it's good to know a film that's making headlines has only opened in 10% of the world.
If two big films like Moana 2 and Wicked are facing off, it's good to know if one of them still has big markets like Japan still to come. No, I haven't done all the math on those two yet. But Wicked still has Germany, South Korea and Japan ahead of it and they represent 12.3% of the worldwide box office; Moana 2 has already opened in them. I'm hoping to get a program that will do all this for me automatically. Stay tuned.
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