PUSHPA: THE RULE - PART 2 | Y2K | WEREWOVLES openings | November and year-to-date 2024 box office update | December 6 to 8, 2024 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: December 6 to 8, 2024
1) Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2 opening
- Following the big openings over Thanksgiving, the first two weekends in December are quiet and driven by holdover business. That leaves room for the North American release of Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2, an Indian-language epic action thriller. The first Pushpa played for one weekend in December 2021 to $1.32 million on 400 screens.
Only three other Indian-language films have opened wide during the last 20 years. The biggest was RRR Roudram Ranam Roudhiram; it started with $9.5 million in March 2022. A circuit of approx. 1,250 theaters serves the key Indian population centers in North American.
This 3-day opening is fair, but the movie started on Thursday and audiences were waiting for it (it made $4.4 million on its first day). In total, $10 million is an excellent 4-day opening in a highly specialized niche market like this:
2) Y2K and Werewolves
- The weekend also has two targeted genre pics, Y2K and Werewolves. Both are small releases with weak opening numbers for their types:
Y2K is opening to an estimated $2.1 million on 2,108 screens. It's a disaster/horror youth comedy about a party on the eve of the new millennium that descends into chaos and trouble when the new year strikes;
Werewolves is debuting to an estimated $1.2 million on 1,351 screens. It's a horror thriller about a super-moon event that turns anyone exposed to the moonlight into a werewolf. It happened once before and millions of people died, and it’s happening again.
3) November and 2024 year-to-date box office update
- The November period finished down -7.7% compared with the pre-pandemic average (the average of November 2017/2018/2019). The month was up +54.0% compared with November 2023. As always, we’re focused on the pre-pandemic comparison. Down -7.7% is a lukewarm result, however...
November was wildly mixed. The first 21 days were off approx. -55% compared with 2017/2018/2019, and then Wicked, Gladiator and Moana arrived and the next 14 days were up approx. +50%. Excuse our casual language here: that's crazy —
- Year-to-date, the BO is now down -24.3% compared with the pre-pandemic average, and down -6.7% compared with last year. The entire year has been up and down; half the year off, and half the year on. The current year-end rally is terrific, but it doesn't erase the slow periods when the release schedule went slack.
Looking ahead, December
- This weekend’s holdover business is record-setting, and the momentum should continue through December. In two weeks, on December 20, the box office gets another lift from Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog. After that, A Complete Unknown/Bob Dylan, Babygirl/Nicole Kidman, and Nosferatu/a Gothic horror remake, open on Christmas day.
2024’s box office comparisons should improve between now and the end of the year. December is the #2 moviegoing month of the year, behind only July. We like this particular December calendar — it’s the best scenario of all possibilities.
Thanksgiving came late this year, which shortens the quiet period between Thanksgiving and Christmas, and Christmas and New Year on Wednesdays is an advantage. Starting on December 20, there’s going to be a torrid run of moviegoing that extends for 17 days to January 5. With the current lineup of broad-appeal, crowd-pleasing films, it's going to be an outstanding finish to an otherwise inconsistent and frustrating year:
- Meanwhile, the Awards movies continue to roll out in steps: September 5 (Dec 13), The Brutalist (Dec 20), and Vermiglio (Dec 25, the Grand Prize winner at the Venice Film Festival and Italy's entry for the Academy's Best International Feature).
[Note: For our monthly BO calculations, 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 days/weeks/and day-mix, like apples-to-apples. For November, all years include the entire Thanksgiving week. There are different ways to do this and you might see slightly different industry figures — this is how we like to do it.]
Our last two posts were:
MOANA 2 opening | Family genre update | Awards movies overview | November 29 to December 1, 2024 weekend here
WICKED PART 1 | GLADIATOR 2 openings | Legacy sequels | Where we are now | November 22 to 24, 2024 weekend here