By Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” dominated the domestic box-office this weekend and while slightly too rosy estimated have cooled a little, it’s set to be a strong performer for the next few weeks.
The well-reviewed title snagged $62 million domestically in the pre-Christmas frame, along with nabbing an ‘A’ CinemaScore in exit polls suggesting it will have long legs.
Coming in at a cost-effective $122 million, the film is tracking similar to the previous movies – better than the first but not quite as high as the second. The film doesn’t open overseas until Christmas so those numbers for it aren’t in yet.
The fates were more mixed for Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King”. That $200 million budget film had a bad domestic $35 million start – a “Joker” sequel-level drop of 82% from the $192 million opening of Jon Favreau’s 2019 “The Lion King” adaptation of which this is a prequel.
That’s not good, but overseas may end up saving the film’s reputation slightly. The title opened this week in numerous overseas territories and faired well – taking $87.2 million from those markts and pushing the opening weekend global gross to $122 million globally.
Even so, that’s behind pre-release expectations of $50M domestic, $130M overseas. The film landed a solid ‘A- ‘ CinemaScore so Disney is hoping audiences will turn out over the Christmas break to check it out.
“Sonic” also benefits from being a male-oriented blockbuster and family friendly title in a marketplace that has spent a month dominated by two female-skewing family titles – “Wicked” and “Moana 2” – that are now cooling down after stellar runs.
Both are still performing though – the “Moana” sequel nabbed a further $13.1 million domestically and $32.8 million overseas, while “Wicked” took $13.5 million domestically and $13.2 million overseas – bringing their totals to $790 million and $571 million worldwide respectively.
In limited release, Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” pulled in a three day of $267,000 from four screens – nabbing a $66,700 per screen average which is the third best of 2024 behind only “Anora” ($91.7K) and “Kinds of Kindness” ($75.4K). A24 says 30 showtimes were sold out over the weekend for the 70MM and Imax previews.
Source: Variety
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