ONE OF THEM DAYS | WOLF MAN openings | Horror 2024 final notes | Where we are now | January 17 to 19, 2025 Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: January 17 to 19, 2025 Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend
1) One of Them Days opening
- This is an excellent opening for an original Black American comedy. The 3-day figure is double the average for the genre, with sensational critics’ reviews and an excellent audience score (an A- CinemaScore). At a cost of $14m, the film is going to be very profitable when it finishes in all ancillary markets, even with a small contribution from foreign:
Setting this opening aside, at the moment, there is no Black American comedic superstar, male or female, who crosses over to all audiences and sells tickets overseas the way Eddie Murphy and Will Smith did in the past. It's a gaping hole in the industry's repertoire. It's been so long since we had someone like that, it's easy to forget what it was like.
2) Wolf Man opening
- As a single-episode horror film, this opening is good, but the movie is aiming higher than that, and as the start of a new horror series and as a horror remake, it's weak. It's based on the 1941 Universal classic starring Bela Lugosi. Like the recent Nosferatu, it combines classic horror material with a popular young cast (Julia Garner, above right).
It's a Blumhouse production and it cost a reasonable $25 million to make. Co-writer/director Leigh Whannell is a major horror talent (the Saw and Insidious movies, The Invisible Man), but audiences aren’t enthusiastic (a C- CinemaScore, Nosferatu received a B-). It’s a miss, but it’s not a disaster:
3) Horror 2024 final notes
- We want to take one last look at horror films in 2024, because the 4th quarter titles delivered, starting with Terrifier 3 in October (finishing with $89m worldwide on a shoestring budget of around $2 million), then Heretic in November (currently $52m and still earning), and Nosferatu since Christmas (heading toward $175m).
Total horror BO in 2024 will total $1.84 billion — that's in the league with the genre's best recent years. As noted, there was a rush of titles during the year (28 of them), which dilutes the numbers on a per-movie basis. The hits carried the genre, but that's true for all types of film:
- Looking ahead, 2025 has a good lineup as well, particularly in the 2nd half with a run of big sequels: M3GAN 2 (Jun 27), I Know What You Did Last Summer 3 (Jul 18), Insidious 6 (Aug 25), a Conjuring sequel (Sep 5), Saw XI (Sep 26), Black Phone 2 (Oct 17), and Five Nights at Freddy's 2 (Dec 5). As always, a few new films will surprise and break out — it happens every year.
4) Where we are now
- Historically, January ranks in the middle of the pack compared with other months, underpinned by the big holdover Christmas titles. This year, the biggest year-end pics opened early, over Thanksgiving. Past years had a Christmas juggernaut still playing in January, like a Star Wars, a Jumanji, or an Aquaman. This year, Mufasa and Sonic the Hedgehog are doing well, but not as well as previous giants.
With genre pics filling this month’s calendar, January 2024’s box office looks similar to last year’s, which was below the pre-pandemic average by more than -40% — weak:
Our last two posts were:
DEN OF THIEVES 2: PANTERA | BETTER MAN openings | The year-end rally | The Golden Globes | Rotten Tomatoes update | January 10 to 12, 2025 weekend here
NOSFERATU | A COMPLETE UNKNOWN | BABYGIRL | THE FIRE INSIDE openings | December 27 to 29, 2024 Christmas weekend here