THE COLOR PURPLE, THE BOYS IN THE BOAT, and FERRARI openings | December and the 2023 box office | Year-end notes | Christmas week 2023
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: Christmas Week, 2023
With Christmas and New Year landing on Mondays, this year's Christmas day releases are completely atypical. We're going to treat Christmas day, a huge day at the box office, as "opening weekend." The week between the holidays is strong playing time, and then starting next week, business will fall sharply.
1) The Color Purple opening
- This is an excellent opening for a December musical drama. Christmas day alone is above average for the genre, with excellent critics’ reviews and audience scores. The film has played well during the week and should continue over the New Year’s holiday (musical dramas average a 4.1x multiple).
Foreign audiences are not familiar with this quintessential American story — international business is going to reflect that:
2) The Boys in the Boat opening
- This is a very good start for a sports drama. As noted last week, sports dramas are not big movies. Business is above average and holding extremely well during the week. With an A CinemaScore, this film is a crowd-pleaser.
Historically, sports dramas have limited potential overseas, usually because they feature an American sport like baseball or basketball. Rowing/crew has broader appeal and that should help internationally:
3) Ferrari opening
- This is a weak start for an action drama, at below average levels. On average, action dramas open well, to $14.2m. Reviews are good, but the picture is not getting strong traction:
4) December and the 2023 box office
- The domestic box office in 2023 is going to finish down approx. -20% compared with the 3-year pre-pandemic average. You may hear slightly different numbers — there are different ways to do this — but all of them should be close to -20%.
The deficit improved to -14% following the summer rally, but the fall and year-end lineup has struggled following the strikes. The chart below is self-explanatory, so we'll let it speak for itself and concentrate on the year-end notes below the chart:
5) 2023 year-end notes
- There’s no question, change is afoot. The country and the world are not in the same place they were four years ago. We've had seven years of divisive politics, a severe pandemic, two serious wars, climate change and inflation. Audiences are in a different mood now. Tastes are changing:
There will always be action movies, but audiences are showing less interest in being overwhelmed by spectacle and saving the universe. Moviegoers are resonating with stories that are closer to home, that they can identify with and relate to;
Barbie, Oppenheimer, Sound of Freedom and Taylor Swift hit because, aside from being entertaining, the stories spoke to audiences’ experience of the world. The films connected on a human level and audiences were inspired. When that happened, moviegoers ran to the theater;
Sound of Freedom, finished with $278m worldwide, budget was approx. $15m The horror genre shows no sign of slowing down. When horror fans gasp and laugh and jump out of their seats, you don't have to be Sigmund Freud to know they're conjuring their own personal fears of the world. Horror movies continue to be extremely inventive (and cheap to make);
Animation had a good year in 2023. The movies that worked had human personality and "edge." We're talking about Super Mario, Spider-Verse and Elemental. The animation hits were not happily-ever-after fairy tales;
The Super Mario Bros. Movie, finished with $1.36 billion worldwide, budget was approx. $100m There is still a place for drama, comedy, romance, biography, and crime films. The bar is higher than ever. We did not think Bohemian Rhapsody would ever be surpassed at the BO, but Oppenheimer did it (they made $911m and $952m, respectively). More than ever, these genres are driven by their casts.
- Hollywood is generally good at staying connected to its audience, but during the pandemic and strikes, the development process froze. New projects, new stories, new ideas, and new talent were put on hold.
For now, we’re working through a backlog. New ideas and new voices will come, as they did during the summer, but big movies take 18 to 24 months to put together, produce and release — sometimes more. The development process was just re-energized several months ago. It doesn’t happen quickly.
- You might hear someone say, "Hollywood is running out of ideas, there are no more good stories to tell," but that is not true. Look at the indie-art-auteur part of the business. Those movies are nimbler and stay closer to the current culture, and they're having an exceptional year. There are never "no more good stories to tell."
Have a fantastic year in 2024, and thank you for reading this newsletter.