THE WILD ROBOT | MEGALOPOLIS openings | September and year-to-date 2024 box office | September 27 to 29, 2024 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: September 27 to 29, 2024
1) The Wild Robot opening
- This is an excellent opening for a new animation film. The weekend figure is above average for the launch of a new series, and that average includes the biggest animation titles in recent years. Critics' reviews and audience scores are outstanding (an A CinemaScore).
Animation releases have been holding extremely well after opening, especially when they're received as enthusiastically as this. The movie should have a strong domestic run now, with overseas distribution rolling out through October:
- Family moviegoing continues to impress, with a number of big titles still to come over the November and December holidays (Moana 2 Nov 27, Mufasa: The Lion King Dec 20, and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Dec 20).
The genre should total over $6 billion in worldwide box office in 2024, which is back to pre-pandemic levels. We'll have a summary chart for family films during the next few weeks.
2) Megalopolis opening
- This is a weak opening for a dystopian sci-fi fantasy drama. The weekend start is below average, with polarized/mixed reviews and a negative audience score (a D+ CinemaScore).
Most futuristic stories lead with their action. This movie is about social and political ideas. Audiences and critics are finding it alternately awkward, overdone, and at times confusing:
- Francis Ford Coppola has always been interested in stories about ambition, personal risk, success and failure. The filmmaker puts his money where his mouth is. 47 years ago, he went into debt to finish Apocalypse Now and it paid off handsomely. This time he sold a piece of his businesses and borrowed against them to self-finance the $120 million production, plus another est. $15 million in marketing.
The movie is an ambitious, personal vision. Sometimes a film like this beats the odds and makes a lot of money. This one is not working and the result is going to be a big tax write-off. (More about the production is here.)
3) September and year-to-date 2024 box office
- September was a decent month at the domestic box office, finishing down -12.1% compared with the pre-pandemic average (the average of September 2017/2018/2019), but up +32.9% compared with September 2023.
The month started extremely well with the Beetlejuice sequel, then cooled during the last three weeks. After nearly everything worked during the summer, now we're having up and down weekends:
- Year-to-date, the BO is now down -25.8% compared with pre-pandemic, and down -12.2% compared with last year. Both of those numbers have come a long way back from the depths of where we were in May, but there’s still a ways to go. As always, our goal is a return to pre-pandemic business levels, not just last year’s levels.
Looking ahead, October
- Historically, October is the second slowest month of the year after September, but it's a 52 week-per-year business and this October looks solid, anchored by three big sequels: Joker Oct 4, Smile Oct 18, and Venom Oct 25.
There are also a number of high-profile original titles, including Saturday Night Oct 11, Piece by Piece Oct 11, The Apprentice Oct 11, and Conclave Oct 25.
- Overall, the release schedule continues to improve. The total number of wide releases on the calendar is now 132, including 56 franchise series titles (60 is typical). Soon we'll get a handful more awards pictures dated in November and December. The rising release counts are another sign that moviegoing is slowly climbing back to normal.
[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/same weeks/same day-mix, like apples-to-apples. Next month, we'll include five weeks in the October period, from September 27th to October 31st. There are different ways to do this and you might see slightly different industry figures — this is how we like to do it.]