PRISCILLA opening | FIVE NIGHTS AT FREDDY'S second weekend | October and year-to-date 2023 box office | November 3 to 5, 2023 weekend

Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary

Nov 05, 2023

1) Priscilla opening

- This is a fair opening for a romance drama. The weekend figure is a bit below average for the genre, with excellent reviews and very good audience scores. These are not big movies, but when they connect they can go on a run, and that could still happen here:

2) Five Nights at Freddy’s second weekend

- Five Nights at Freddy’s is crashing in its second weekend of simultaneous streaming — it’s down approx. -78%.

Simultaneous streaming doesn’t create bigger box office or streaming viewership. The two viewing options compete with each other. An exclusive theatrical run generates the greatest total BO and then elevates the film and builds anticipation of the streaming premier that follows it.

3) October and year-to-date 2023 box office

- In October, the domestic box office was down -23.3% compared with the 2019/2018/2017 October average. Year-to-date, 2023 is now down -16.2%:

Taylor Swift smashed domestic records for a concert film, and Five Nights at Freddy’s had the #3 all-time horror film opening. If Taylor Swift had not stepped in and contributed $152.4m to the month, October would have been down -41.8%, and the year would be down -17.9%.
- Killers of the Flower Moon, Exorcist: Believer, and PAW Patrol 2 also performed well for their types of film, but in spite of it, the overall lineup was thin and fell behind pre-pandemic Octobers, which had titles like Joker ($1.07b worldwide), Venom ($856m), Maleficent 3 ($492m), and A Star is Born ($436m).
  PAW Patrol 2 has been strong overseas, with $168m worldwide to date

Release Count

- There were 13 new wide releases during the five-week period (on 1,000+ domestic screens). 13 is a good number, except that two of the films were re-releases and three titles did very little business.

The total wide release count so far in 2023 is running close to 2019 (111 versus 101), and it's ahead of 2022 (86) — the numbers are above.

November 2023

- Big movies start arriving next weekend. The Marvels opens on Nov 10, the Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes and Trolls 3 are on Nov 17, and Wish/Disney and Napoleon are on Nov 22. All of the films have strong casts that would help the marketing, but the actors have been unavailable and it’s going to hurt.

Box office comparisons will continue to be tough. Past Novembers had giants like Frozen II ($1.45 billion worldwide), Bohemian Rhapsody ($904m), Thor 3 ($854m), Coco ($807m), and Justice League ($658m).
The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, November 17

- This weekend is another example of the uneven calendar, with no new studio title (Dune 2 would have opened here but moved to next March due to the strikes). We estimate that the year is on track to finish down -17.5% to -20% domestically, after getting as close as -14.0% in August.

[Methodology note: For our box office comparisons, we take the complete weeks of each month (each week runs Friday to Thursday) and we line up the same weeks across the years, so we are comparing the same # of days and the same day mix. That’s the most accurate approach.]