Your Weekend Box Office Actuals (12.19.16)
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| Film | Weekend | Opening Weekend | Current Gross | |
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Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | $155.091 million | $155.091 million | $155.091 million |
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Moana | $12.726 million | $56.631 million | $162.920 million |
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Office Christmas Party | $8.587 million | $16.890 million | $31.655 million |
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Collateral Beauty | $7.102 million | $7.102 million | $7.102 million |
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Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them | $5.071 million | $74.403 million | $207.722 million |
Newcomer movies Rogue One: A Star Wars Story and Collateral Beauty fell slightly short of our expectations, but Rogue One’s still massive intake helped Disney because the first studio ever to make over $7 billion globally at the box office. The remainder of the weekend’s box office fell more or less exactly where it was supposed to.
While Rogue One, the first ever spinoff Star Wars movie, couldn’t crack the top ten openings of all time (it ultimately came in twelfth place), it became the third largest opening of the year as well as the second December movie to make over $100 million opening weekend (following, naturally, last year’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens). The film is largely earning good reviews from critics and fans alike, although slightly more mixed than The Force Awakens. Still, any “mixed” feelings didn’t keep fans from going out to see the film in droves and catapulting the film into the position of the fifteen highest grossing film of 2016 only after three days. Ultimately what this reaffirms is that Lucasfilm and Star Wars movies, under the umbrella of Disney, are going to continue to dominate. It may have come behind Captain America: Civil War and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in terms of openings, but those two benefited from the abundance of familiar characters as well as a familiar universe, and not just the latter (which is what Rogue One offers).
Lucasfilm, Walt Disney Pictures
Disney continued to score this weekend as Moana, expectedly, came in second with an intake of $12.7 million in its fourth weekend. The film is now nearly to $300 million worldwide, still well behind that of Zootopia and Finding Dory’s totals, but still extremely successful. After all, the consistent performance from Moana, as well as Rogue One’s strong opening, is what propelled Disney to its $7 billion-plus box office. There’s still seemingly no end in sight to the studio’s triumphs, as its animation studios will likely continue to do strong and there are still numerous Marvel and Star Wars movies on the upcoming docket.
Where the weekend differed the most from expectations is the results of Collateral Beauty’s opening. While it cannot be determined what truly caused the film to fall much shorter than several reports predicted, it’s likely the films very poor reviews affected audiences’ decisions to go see it. The film currently boasts a 14 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the lowest of any recent film and any upcoming film. Clearly, even the star-studded cast of the film couldn’t persuade people to go see a downright maudlin feature about a father who’s lost his daughter and gets more or less tricked by his co-workers who are all suffering their own personal problems. Talk about the holiday spirit…
Therefore, Office Christmas Party came in ahead of Collateral Beauty, making $8.5 million in its second weekend and dropping around 50 percent. At $51.4 million globally, it’s still well shy of making a profit on its $45 million budget and needs to hope for some longer legs going forward. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also continued to do well this weekend — its fifth weekend out in theaters. It fell 51.3 percent to make just over $5 million and is now soaring on a magical global total of $718 million. So if this weekend can teach us anything, it’s that long-standing franchises like Star Wars and Harry Potter have lost none of their power, even with spinoff stories.
Amazon Studios
The other movies we were watching this weekend consisted of Manchester by the Sea and La La Land. While the former came out ahead, it only made $140,000 more… in 1,000 more theaters. La La Land’s $4.1 million weekend intake in 200 theaters is easily the most impressive and noteworthy aspect of this race and as La La Land, the current frontrunner to win Best Picture, continues to open in more theaters, we’ll be keeping an eye on its box office.
(Source: boxoffice.com, boxofficemojo.com. Figures represent numbers at time of writing, and may have changed.)
Anya Crittenton | Associate Editor
