Theaters Are Quiet Ahead of 'Avatar' Premiere
by EG
Theater owners faced another weekend in which ticket sales were shockingly low, as studios held back their new releases to make way for this week's debut of Avatar: The Way of Water. The long-awaited sequel is expected to be the biggest movie of 2022, but in the meantime, theaters are slogging through weeks of business that's nearly as bad as it was during the pandemic. Read on for details.
Via Box Office Mojo.
As we await the opening of Avatar: The Way of Water, the weekend’s box office was once again terrible, just narrowly avoiding being the year’s worst. With nothing new opening wide, the overall gross from all films declined 33% from last weekend for a cume of $35.5 million, the second worst of the year after January 28-30’s $34.9 million cume. Studios are understandably wary of opening ahead of the sequel to the world’s highest grossing film of all time, but the box office is suffering as a result, with another weekend that would have been the worst in decades before the pandemic.
The top five was entirely unchanged from last weekend. Unsurprisingly, Black Panther: Wakanda Forever came in first, tying with its predecessor for a total of five number one weekends. The sequel was down 37% for an $11.1 million weekend, bringing its cume to $410 million. This puts it right on the verge of crossing Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness $411 million total, which will make it the second highest grossing film of the year thus far and the eighth-highest grosser in the MCU. The global cume is now at $768 million.
Second place went to Violent Night with $8.7 million, a great hold as it dropped just 35%. The R-rated action-comedy with Santa Claus as the hero has a ten day cume of $26.7 million, which is very solid for the $20 million budgeted film. It’s running just slightly behind the 2015 Christmas horror film Krampus (ten day cume of $28.6 million) which opened stronger ($16.3 million compared to $13.5 million) but had smaller weekday grosses and a smaller second weekend gross ($8.4 million, down 48%). Krampus finished with a cume of $42.7 million domestic and $61.5 million worldwide, numbers that Violent Night, which currently has a global cume of $41.8 million, could end up surpassing.
Strange World took third with $3.6 million, down 29%. Yes, that’s a good hold, but it doesn’t change the fact that this is one of the year’s biggest flops. The cume on Disney’s expensive animated film (reported budget estimates range from $130 to $180 million) is just $30.5 million domestic and $53.5 million worldwide, and its post-third weekend domestic cume is less than half of where Encanto was last year at the same point in its release ($71.9 million, before finishing with a cume of $96 million domestic and $257 million worldwide).
The Menu ended up in fourth with $2.7 million, continuing to hold well with a decline of just 22%. The film is at $29 million domestic and $57.7 million worldwide.
Get the rest of the story at Box Office Mojo.