Unlike the past two years, the 2023 holiday box office will not have a massive hit like “Spider-Man: No Way Home” or “Avatar: The Way of Water” to turbocharge ticket sales. In its place are a medley of films looking for longterm success after modest starts this Christmas weekend — and not all of them are expected to succeed.
The No. 1 film this weekend is expected to be Warner Bros./DC’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” a sequel to James Wan’s $1.15 billion superhero hit released back in 2018. “Aquaman” earned an opening weekend of $67 million five years ago and reached $100 million in domestic grosses after Christmas Day two days later.
With Christmas Day falling on a Monday this year, “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” is seeing its four-day opening weekend estimates top out at $40 million, enough to likely make it the No. 1 film this weekend.
But with audiences largely abandoning DC ahead of its reboot under James Gunn and Peter Safran, chances are not looking good for “Aquaman 2” to sustain long-term interest among audiences outside the most devoted of comic book fans, and the film would be fortunate to gross even half of what its predecessor made.
All three DC films released earlier this year — “Shazam: Fury of the Gods,” “The Flash” and “Blue Beetle,” — failed to cross $275 million in global grosses. And their combined gross of $526 million is more than 30% short of the $772 million that “The Batman” made alone for the studio in 2022.
Insiders at Warner Bros. told TheWrap they’re still confident that Gunn’s reboot, which will begin with “Superman: Legacy” in 2025, will revive box office buzz for DC when it’s ready. But this year of flops is still a hard fall for a franchise that racked up over $6 billion in global grosses from 2013 to 2019, including cult hits like Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” acclaimed works like Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman,” and “Joker,” the first comic book movie to win the Venice Film Festival’s Golden Lion award.
If Warner Bros. is to have any box office triumphs this winter, it will have to come from their efforts to revive the struggling movie musical genre. After the studio had a big misfire with “In the Heights” in 2021, while Disney/20th Century had similar struggles with Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story,” there were questions about whether audiences had suddenly abandoned musicals.
The warm reception for Timothée Chalamet and “Wonka,” which has grossed over $43 million domestic and $155 million worldwide and counting, suggests there may be hope for the genre. While that film tries to leg out over the next several weeks, Warner is sending in another musical, “The Color Purple,” on Christmas Day.
If Chalamet’s star power is allowing “Wonka” to succeed where “Heights” and “Story” failed, then “The Color Purple” will certainly benefit from its loaded cast, which includes Taraji P. Henson, Fantasia Barrino, Danielle Brooks, and “Little Mermaid” star Halle Bailey. With the SAG-AFTRA strike over, that cast, along with producer Oprah Winfrey, has been out promoting the film in the hopes of building awards buzz.
Exhibition sources told TheWrap that presales for “The Color Purple” have been robust, with trackers projecting $8-10 million grossed on Christmas Day and $37-40 million through New Year’s Eve on Sunday. Reviews have been generally positive with an 85% Rotten Tomatoes score at time of writing.
With a reported budget of at least $90 million before marketing, “The Color Purple” is looking for word-of-mouth and maybe some Oscar buzz in January to keep turnout strong. Black audiences, particularly older ones, will be the core demographic, but post-release buzz could help the film earn cross-demo support in the new year.
Beyond Warner Bros., Universal will try to win over families with “Migration,” the new, original animated film from Illumination. Chris Meledandri’s animation house has been riding high with the wild success of “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” but is looking at a much lower opening for this title in the low-to-mid teens.
Since theaters reopened in 2021, there have been several animated box office hits, but they have all been sequels or adaptations of popular pre-existing IP. Films that don’t fit into those categories like Disney’s “Wish” and DreamWorks’ “Ruby Gillman: Teenage Kraken” have fallen by the wayside while Pixar’s “Elemental” needed strong post-release buzz to post a respectable theatrical run after suffering the worst opening in the studio’s history.
Now it’s Illumination’s turn to see if it can get audiences interested in “Migration” without the hook of familiarity. Universal would be thrilled if the film can get even close to the $481 million global run of DreamWorks’ “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” a year ago, though the bar to theatrical profitability is lower given that the majority of Illumination films are budgeted in the $80-90 million range. Early reviews for “Migration” have skewed positive with a 72% Rotten Tomatoes score.
A slew of other Christmas releases are set to open this weekend to less than $10 million, including Sony’s romantic comedy “Anyone But You” starring Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Sporting a $25 million budget co-financed by SK Global and TSG, the film is projected for a $7 million 4-day opening from 3,000 theaters this weekend.
A24 will also go wide this weekend with “The Iron Claw,” Sean Durkin’s tragic biopic about the Von Erich wrestling family starring Zac Efron and Jeremy Allen White. The film is projected for a $6 million 4-day opening from 2,500 theaters, as A24 is hoping that the film can gain strong word-of-mouth in the southern U.S. where the film takes place. A24 has touted that early access screenings have yielded the strongest audience scores for any film released by the studio among moviegoers outside New York and California.
Finally, Amazon/MGM’s “The Boys in the Boat” and Neon’s “Ferrari” will release wide on Christmas Day, with “Boat” projected for a $3 million opening day total and “Ferrari” headed for $1 million. “The Boys in the Boat,” which is directed by George Clooney, has received mixed reviews with a 51% Rotten Tomatoes score.
“Ferrari” was one of the first major indie films to receive interim-agreement approval during the SAG-AFTRA strike, allowing stars Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz to attend the film’s Venice premiere. Neon acquired the $95 million production from STX, but presales for the biopic drama have been soft so far. The film received positive reviews with a 76% Rotten Tomatoes score.
