"Sonic the Hedgehog 3" Rules the Box Office w/ $62M Debut

[JamesG]

Sonic 3 Speeds to $62 Million Debut, Mufasa: The Lion King Gets Trampled with $35 Million
by Rebecca Rubin
Dec. 22, 2024


Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has powered to the top of box office charts while Mufasa: The Lion King is getting trampled in its first weekend of release.

Paramount’s third Sonic adventure has opened at No. 1 with $62 million from 3,761 North American theaters. Bolstered by positive reviews and strong audience scores, the film beat initial expectations of $55 million to $60 million and looks to remain a holiday hit through the new year.



Sonic has cemented itself as a promising new film franchise for Paramount, with the first two movies generating a combined $725 million at the global box office while driving more than $180 million in consumer spending from home entertainment rentals and digital purchases.

The property, based on the popular Sega video game series, also inspired a Paramount+ spinoff series, Knuckles, which debuted earlier this year. Meanwhile, a fourth movie is already in development for 2027.







Disney’s The Lion King prequel Mufasa trotted behind in second place with $35 million from 4,100 cinemas, falling way behind pre-release expectations of $50 million. It’s a terrible start for a tentpole that cost above $200 million to produce and roughly $100 million to promote across the globe.

Despite mixed reviews, the film has several potential saving graces, including a solid “A-” grade on CinemaScore from audiences and the reality that December releases aren’t known to deliver robust debuts. But, if word-of-mouth is favorable, the film can enjoy staying power into January and beyond.

(That was true of last year’s Timothee Chalamet-led prequel Wonka, for example, which notched $39 million to start and tapped out with $218 million in North America and $634 million worldwide.)







Christmas season is looking less festive than usual with adult-skewing offerings like Searchlight’s Bob Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown, the Focus Features Nosferatu remake and A24’s erotic thriller Babygirl as the only newcomers on the calendar for Dec. 25.

This year, most of those four-quadrant films — including Universal’s Wicked, Disney’s Moana 2 and Paramount’s Gladiator II — were released around Thanksgiving. All three look to keep drawing audiences through Christmas time.







Wicked floated to third place with $13.5 million from 3,296 venues. The big-budget movie musical has generated $383.91 million domestically and $571 million globally after five weekends of release.

It landed ever-so-slightly ahead of Moana 2, which added $13.1 million from 3,600 theaters in its fourth weekend on the big screen. The Polynesian animated adventure has grossed $359 million in North America and a mammoth $790 million worldwide to date. It’s poised to become Disney’s third movie to cross $1 billion this year.

Gladiator II dropped to No. 6 with $4.45 million from 2,397 cinemas, bringing its domestic tally to $153 million. Ridley Scott’s sequel has grossed $416.2 million at the global box office, which is great for cinema operators but less so for Paramount, considering the sword-and-sandal sequel carries a hefty $250 million price tag.







Elsewhere, Sony’s Kraven the Hunter, a superhero spinoff starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Spider-Man’s notorious foe, tumbled to seventh place with $3.1 million in its second weekend of release, declining a tragic 72% from its already-rough $11 million debut.

So far, the $110 million budgeted-film has amassed just $17.4 million domestically and $42 million globally.







In limited release, A24’s historical epic The Brutalist opened with $266,791 from four screens — translating to a solid $66,698 per location.

According to the indie studio, the majority of inaugural audiences were under 35 years old while almost half of them heard about the Oscar hopeful through Letterboxd, a social media platform where users rate, review and discuss all things cinema.

Brady Corbet directed the three-hour-30-minute film (which includes an intermission), which will remain in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles before expanding nationwide in January.

https://variety.com/2024/film/news/b...nd-1236257432/





December 20-22, 2024: Weekend Studio Estimates

1. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 $62,000,000
2. Mufasa: The Lion King $35,000,000
3. Wicked $13,500,000 / $383,915,875
4. Moana 2 $13,100,000 / $359,068,328
5. Homestead $6,066,710
6. Gladiator II $4,450,000 / $153,937,987
7. Kraven: The Hunter $3,100,000 / $17,434,701
8. The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim $1,270,000 / $7,370,171
9. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever $825,000 / $38,454,951
10. Queer $364,240 / $2,837,173