'Wonka' Wins the Weekend
by EG
The musical fantasy movie Wonka starring Timothee Chalamet turned in a strong performance over its debut weekend this week. Ticket sales for the movie came in at the high end of predictions, and its strong showing perked up a December that has been otherwise quite sleepy. With no strong competition to close out the year, Wonka is likely to be the holiday movie to see through the end of December and the beginning of January. Read on for details.
Via Variety.
“Wonka,” a fantasy musical starring Timothée Chalamet as the eccentric chocolatier, charmed in its box office debut, collecting $39 million over the weekend.
It’s a sweet start, as long as the $125 million-budgeted family film has momentum around the holidays. The good news for Warner Bros. is that December releases rarely generate huge opening weekends but tend to stick around on the big screen and show staying power through the new year. To that end, it’s promising that “Wonka” landed an “A-” CinemaScore from audiences. Critics have been kind as well, bestowing “Wonka” with an 83% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It’s a sign the PG film will be able to endure against competition from upcoming releases such as Universal and Illumination’s animated “Migration,” Warner’s musical adaptation of “The Color Purple” and the DC Comics sequel “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom.”
“‘Wonka’ has the right tone for the holidays and momentum is very good,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “Critics’ reviews and audience scores are strong, and the genre performs well overseas.”
“Wonka” helps cement the star power of Chalamet, the third actor to play the beloved Roald Dahl character that Gene Wilder originated in 1971’s “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and Johnny Depp later embodied in the 2005 remake. The 27-year-old Chalamet has led blockbusters like “Dune” and indie favorites such as “Call Me By Your Name” and “Little Women,” but “Wonka” is the kind of execution-dependent family film that doesn’t work unless audiences buy into Chalamet’s songs and dances about a world of pure imagination. The prequel, directed by “Paddington” filmmaker Paul King and co-starring Olivia Colman, Keegan-Michael Key and Hugh Grant as an Oompa-Loompa, centers on the early days of Willy Wonka and takes place long before a poor boy named Charlie Bucket wins a golden ticket to tour the world-famous and heavily guarded chocolate factory.
“Wonka” is already resonating at the international box office, where it opened last weekend to $43 million. The film added another $53.6 million from 77 markets, bringing its worldwide tally to $150 million.
With “Wonka” as this weekend’s only new nationwide release, holdovers like Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and director Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” rounded out box office charts.
In second place, “The Hunger Games” prequel added $6.1 million from 3,291 theaters in its fifth weekend of release. The movie has impressively remained in the top two since its November debut and has generated $145 million domestically and $300 million globally to date.
Get the rest of the story at Variety.