Avatar Ends Box-Office Silent Nights - Weeks 4, 5 & 6

Thanks to James Cameron, we knocked off everything on our “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue” list all in one weekend!

Avatar: The Way of Water swam into theaters last weekend and found a $134 million opening at the bottom of the pool. It was the 5th biggest opening of the year and woke-up movie theaters that had been seeing little excitement beyond Black Panther 2 return viewers. It also got theater owners to break-out those 3D glasses that had been collecting dust since Gravity in 2013 (at least, that’s the last time I remember wearing 3D glasses during a film). 

While the opening itself is not spectacular spectacular (as they’d say in the Moulin Rouge), it may play out exactly as the last two James Cameron-helmed blockbusters. Both Titanic and the first Avatar had modest openings and then they just never stopped making money for weeks on end. Whereas most big debuts drop-off 60% in their second weekend, Titanic actually went up 24% and Avatar 1 only dropped 2% after a $77 million start. Will the same happen this time or have the digitally created wonders of Pandora become passé?  

In what passes as other box-office news, the holly jolly and bloody Violent Night has become a minor hit (and turned a profit off a $20 million budget) to have grossed $35 million over its three weeks in release. That Violent Night would’ve made more money than Strange World this season is very strange indeed. Yay for quirky films finding their audience. 

The final players of the season will be coming out this weekend and we’ll see if Puss in Boots and Babylon have anything to say about the final Top 5 of the season. At this point the creepy robot movie M3GAN has as much chance to crack the Top 5 as anything else and it only has 10 days in the theater before MLK day. There looks to be lots of low hanging fruit there, which is usually where our poolers live: low. 

The Top Five If Today Was MLK Day:

#1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - $418.9 million

#2. Avatar: The Way of Water - $134.1 million

#3. Violent Night - $35 million

#4. Strange World - $33.8 million

#5. The Menu - $32.1 million

Thanksgiving Movies Treated Like Leftovers - Week 3

 Thanksgiving Weekend has been the bees knees for a lot of Holiday Blockbuster Pool movies. They may not open with the biggest numbers, yet they make a statement. Likewise, without serious competition for a couple weeks, they continue to make money hand over foot. This year, however, audiences stayed away from all the new releases making for empty screenings.

Since the 80’s with Rocky IV, this weekend has cracked out hits like the original Aladdin, Toy Story 1 and 2, A Bug’s Life, Enchanted, Tangled, Ralph Breaks the Internet, Coco, Moana, and Frozen. Wait a second… What do a lot of those films have in common? Hmmm, I wonder… 

So how did Disney’s latest surefire Thanksgiving hit do this year? Strange World opened with $18.9 million. I’m sorry, isn’t that supposed to be $189 million? Nope, the decimal is in the correct place. Disney released an animated movie that couldn’t even muster $4 million a day worth of interest over five days. 

Not going to lie… when I saw the Disney CEO change happening a week before this movie was released, it made me wonder if they knew how poorly this film was going to perform. Next time, it’d be nice if they clued us people in the pool about that before we put that on our list… Grrrr!

Strange World became Disney’s lowest grossing Thanksgiving Break opener since 2002’s Treasure Planet. Now there’s a film you don’t see promoted much on Disney+. Where’s our 20th Anniversary deluxe version of that one?! 

Certainly the pandemic has affected box-office numbers and maybe even more still the family film market. Still, there’s obviously something funky in the Mouse House when Universal’s Sing 2 can gross $162 million last holiday season and nothing else in Disney’s arsenal has come close. In fact, they’ve had three Pixar movies (Soul, Luca, Turning Red) and basically Raya and the Last Dragon go straight to Disney+. Encanto only became a hit on Disney+ last Christmas because the studio ended its disappointing box-office run early. Lightyear was a heavy thud last summer. That’s a lot of movies, a lot of budgets, and not much to show in return. What extra sucks is that at least most of those films were original ideas and I hope this doesn’t mean an about face where the studio just releases a bunch of sequels like Cars 4: Matar’s Revenge and Moana 2: Still Shiny. What can they say except you’re welcome?

Well, any pooler’s one-week stab at Glass Onion: A Knives Out Story is already out. Its 7-day run earned all of $13.3 million. I hope the interest is a lot higher from viewers at home when it starts streaming over Christmas. Otherwise, Netflix may wonder why they paid $225 million for a film where the highest priced item was probably Daniel Craig’s striped pajamas swimsuit.

Devotion didn’t find that same feeling returned from moviegoers. It earned a meager $9 million over the 5-day period. The film was no Midway that got to $56 million in 2019. It was more like May Day.

Bones and All opened wide but found few takers for their Thanksgiving Feast. A $3.6 million weekend suggests that while there may always be room for Jell-O, there may not always be room for cannibals. Even when they look as dreamy as Timothée Chalamet.

As for the continuing films, Black Panther continues to pack-in viewers. Another $63.8 million made Wakanda part of their Thanksgiving Break destinations. Meanwhile, The Menu continues to simmer with another $7.6 million in its 2nd weekend.  

The Top Five If Today Was MLK Day:

#1. Black Panther: Wakanda Forever - $367.5 million

#2. The Menu - $18.9 million

#3. Strange World - $18.8 million

#4. Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery - $13.2 million

#5. Devotion - $9 million