'The Boy and the Heron' Wins the Weekend
by EG
It was a good weekend to be a Japanese movie studio in North America this week. The week's top movie was the animated The Boy and the Heron from Studio Ghibli, and third place went to Toho's Godzilla Minus One. In between was The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in second place. It was a quiet weekend in theaters overall, but Japanese movies taking two of the top three spots is unprecedented. Read on for details.
Via Deadline.
GKIDs’ and Studio Ghibli’s The Boy and the Heron posted a $12.8M opening after a near $4M Saturday, giving both studios, and esteemed animated filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, their biggest openings ever in the U.S./Canada marketplace.
While a soft weekend with around $72.8M for all titles, the second weekend of December was +93% over the same period a year ago, +66% over the second frame of the last month of the year in 2021. It was, however, off -38% from pre-Covid 2019’s same weekend ($117.8M). But that’s when Jumanji: Next Level led the box office with a $59.2M. Important to note that between Boy and the Heron and the second weekend of Godzilla Minus One ($8.3M), Japanese box office repped close to a third of this weekend’s overall ticket sales.
Imax domestic screens at 291 drew $2.4M for Boy and the Heron, repping a very big 20% of the pic’s opening. Overall PLF and Imax share is 38%. AMC Boston Commons was still the movie’s highest-grossing take in the U.S., with $63K through yesterday. persity demos are 43% Caucasian, 22% Latino, 7% Black, & 27% Asian/other.
Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes continues to hold strong in weekend 4, -33% for $9.4M, and a running total of $135.6M. Updated final domestic is around $160M. This Francis Lawrence-directed prequel of the Suzanne Collins novel isn’t going anywhere over the Christmas break, when the Warner Bros.’ juggernaut of Wonka, Aquaman 2, and The Color Purple arrives.
Bleecker Street is calling $3.2M at 1,214 sites for Waitress the Musical, and rolling Thursday into Friday. The movie is 100% on Rotten Tomatoes critics with audiences nearly agreeing at 97%. The movie is playing best in the East, West, and South Central, with AMC Lincoln Square its best venue with a running cume of $15K.
Searchlight’s Yorgos Lanthimos, Emma Stone starring and produced Poor Things did ring bling with a $72K opening theater average (or 3-day of $644K at nine theaters), the best this autumn has seen so far, and the third-best of the year, as we told you yesterday behind Focus Features’ Asteroid City ($142K) and A24’s Beau Is Afraid ($80K).
That theater average opening is also higher than that of Everything Everywhere All at Once, which posted $50K per theater from ten cinemas. It pays to wait: you’ll remember that Poor Things was set to launch off its Venice Film Festival world premiere on Sept. 8, but was pushed by the actors’ strike. Searchlight has always fared better with these movies in early December, particularly when it comes to playing in the zeitgeist of the holiday frame and the awards qualification period.
In early exits polls, Poor Things received an A- CinemaScore. Audiences skewed 56% male, 70% under 35, 62% Caucasian, 17% Hispanic, 14% East Asian/Pacific Islander, 6% Black/African American, with 68% excellent with a 75% definite recommend. More than half the crowd are going to tell their friends to see Poor Things ASAP, describing it as visually interesting (81%), well-acted (79%), funny (69%), different/original (68%), interesting (65%) and entertaining (63%).
Get the rest of the story at Deadline.