This year’s Christmas box office winner is Timothée Chalamet’s Wonka, while DC superhero picture Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom fails.
All things considered, Hollywood studios and theater owners aren’t having a very happy holiday season. As an example, revenue on Wednesday was 52% lower than it was on the same day in 2019, the year before the pandemic.
Wonka, which debuted the weekend before Christmas, took back the top spot on Tuesday after losing it to rival Warner Bros. superhero Aquaman 2 over the extended weekend of December 22–25. With $8 million in domestic ticket sales on Wednesday, Ditto was able to push the musical over the $100 million milestone in North America (its total as of Wednesday was $102.5 million).
The Jason Momoa-starring Aquaman sequel has only made $52.5 million domestically in its first six days of release, trailing the first movie by more than 55%. Its worldwide cume, on the other hand, is significantly higher than $100 million.
Following Wonka at No. 2, Illumination and Universal’s Migration have gained ground after a slow start over Christmas weekend. For a total of $30.6 million domestically, the family movie brought in $6.3 million on Wednesday. Third place went to Aquaman 2, with $5.9 million.
Universal anticipated that with almost all schools closed this week, Migration would pick up once gifts were opened.
With $3.9 million, the musical adaptation of The Color Purple, which was produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, debuted at No. 4 on Wednesday. The Warners and Amblin release saw a stunning $18 million opening on Christmas Day, making it the best opening since 2009 (not accounting for inflation) and the second-best opening ever for a film releasing on December 25. Up until Wednesday, the movie’s domestic total stood at $29 million.
Even though The Color Purple is performing better than anticipated, its level of front-loading is still unknown. The film experienced a 45 percent decline from Tuesday to Wednesday, which was greater than that of any other top 10 title.
In contrast, Wonka saw a drop of 25%, Aquaman saw a drop of 29%, and Migration saw a mere 4% decline. (Most films typically experience a drop on Wednesday as a result of Tuesday’s reduced ticket prices in theaters around the nation).
Rounding out the top five was Sony’s edgy romantic comedy Anyone But You, which saw a $2.6 million Wednesday gross and a domestic total of $13.3 million, actually up 1% from the previous day.
