MARTY SUPREME | ANACONDA | SONG SUNG BLUE openings | The year-end season | December 26 to 28, 2025 - Christmas weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary.
The current weekend: December 26 to 28, 2025 - Christmas weekend
1) Marty Supreme opening
- This is an excellent opening for a sports drama. Critics’ reviews are sensational, with an excellent audience score (a B+ CinemaScore). The film is going to get a lift from holiday moviegoing this week — all of the releases are going to benefit now*.
Sports dramas are not big movies to begin with, and they struggle overseas, but the right cast can elevate them (F1/Brad Pitt, Challengers/Zendaya, Air/Ben Affleck and Matt Damon). Timothée Chalamet is making that kind of difference:
- The production was expensive at around $70 million. This was a gutsy creative risk — a period sports drama — and it’s going to pay off, thanks to Mr. Chalamet and great holiday playing time.
(* This past week, Monday and Tuesday earned $31 million and $38 million at the domestic BO, respectively. The previous week, each day earned $6 million and $9 million. The coming week is going to be even stronger — that’s the magnitude of this holiday stretch.)
2) Anaconda opening
- This is a solid opening for a horror remake. The 3-day figure is roughly average for the genre, and it's a bit better start than the previous Anaconda opening in 2004.
Critics’ reviews are lukewarm, but the audience score is very good for the genre (a B CinemaScore). Horror remakes are not strong overseas, but Jack Black is a worldwide superstar (Minecraft, Jumanji) — foreign business should be good:
- The picture cost an estimated $45 million to make; it’s going to be profitable after it finishes all ancillary business (digital sales and rental, streaming, and free TV).
3) Song Sung Blue opening
- This is a solid opening for a musical drama. Critics’ reviews are very good, with an outstanding audience score (an A CinemaScore).
This is a crowd-pleaser, and word-of-mouth should build now among older moviegoers, who take their time getting to the cinema:
- Hugh Jackman has been here before. The Greatest Showman, another December musical, opened domestically to $8.8 million in 2017, with an A CinemaScore. It finished with $174.3 million — that's an exceptional 19.8x multiple ($8.8m x 19.8 = $174.3m). We don’t expect those kinds of numbers, but the movie should have a good run.
There’s more. The Greatest Showman made $64.3m in the UK, $48.3m in Japan, and $12.2m in Mexico. Those are not typos. Song Sung is going to track closer to the footprint of Neil Diamond’s popularity, which means good numbers in the English-speaking markets.
The cost was a reasonable $30 million, with help from New Jersey state production incentives. This is going to be a very profitable movie when it’s done.
4) The year-end season
- The current year-end season (the period from Thanksgiving to January 1) is on track to finish roughly even with the pre-pandemic average (the average of 2017, 2018, 2019) — that’s excellent.
The total year will be down approx. -22% compared with the pre-pandemic average, with a small improvement over 2024 (up +2%). It should have… would have… could have been a better year, but the down periods hurt business badly:
- In January, we’ll look at 2026. Right now, the release schedule looks similar to 2025: A quiet 1st quarter. Then, an excellent summer. Then, a weak October. Then, a sensational year-end.
We want to highlight the current lineup in theaters. When we say “something for everybody,” this is what we mean. This is a healthy theatrical market.
Avatar is doing what it’s supposed to do, with sensational weekday business. It made $13.3m, $16.5m, $10.7m and $24m on Mon, Tues, Wed and Thurs — compare those 1-day numbers with the 3-day openings above:
Next weekend has no new wide releases — that’s the case every first weekend of the year; the big movies are out now — so we’re going to take a break and return on the following weekend, January 9.
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See you in 2026!
Our last two posts were:
AVATAR: FIRE AND ASH | DAVID | THE HOUSEMAID | THE SPONGEBOB MOVIE: SEARCH FOR SQUAREPANTS openings | Where we are now | December 19 to 21, 2025 weekend here
ELLA McCAY opening | The Golden Globes 2026 | Where we are now | December 12 to 14, 2025 weekend here
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