Box Office Report: Ralph Breaks the Box Office

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 25, 2018 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 25, 2018 |

What’s that you say? A Disney film did amazing numbers on a Thanksgiving weekend? I never saw it coming. Ralph Breaks the Internet had the ad campaign to die for on top of brand name recognition, but its $84.5m 5 day weekend was still very impressive. It’s the second largest Thanksgiving five-day gross of all-time. Internationally, the film is just under $126m, in part thanks to a strong opening weekend in China (still behind Incredibles 2), and with many major markets waiting for their release. According to Box Office Mojo, the debut of Ralph Breaks the Internet is tracking almost three times greater than the first film when compared to that same stretch of territories and adjusted for inflation. Disney have had lows this year but their highs are near insurmountable for everyone else in Hollywood. Just wait until Mary Poppins flies into town.

Opening at number 2 is Creed II with a $55.8m Thanksgiving weekend. That’s the largest opening ever for a live-action film over the Thanksgiving period. Audiences are loving it, word of mouth is helping and hey, who doesn’t love a bit of well-done nostalgia?

Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald fell from number 1 to 4 this weekend, a drop of 52% from last week bringing its domestic gross to $117m. Those aren’t great numbers for a franchise that is supposed to be bulletproof, but its international numbers keep it bolstered. Still, it’s telling that the Chinese market mostly rejected this film in favour of Venom. I’m now taking bets on whether this series will ever get to the 5th film. I think it’s ending at 3.

Opening at number 7 — ouch — is Robin Hood, with a Thanksgiving weekend gross of $14.2m. Ouch. Turns out nobody really wanted this film, surprise surprise. Reviews were awful and I can’t say this was a story people were hungry for. I can’t find any official reporting on what this film cost, although common consensus says it was probably over $100m. To not even make back 20% of that domestically in your opening 5-day weekend? not a goof sign. Methinks Lionsgate will write this one off.

The surprise of the week for me comes in the form of Green Book. I would have put money down on this one being a big hit in its second weekend as it added over 1000 theatres to its run. Its gross is now over $7.8m, which isn’t terrible, but it’s way below predictions. Did it go wide too early? Did the conversations surrounding its many issues hinder it? It’s hard to say, because reviews from majority white critics are still strong and audiences who are seeing it love it. But less people than predicted are making the effort to go see it. That may change with word of mouth and as the Oscar season goes on - this feels like a movie that would play super well on screeners - but it goes to show you that in this business, nobody really knows anything.

A Star is Born is super close to crossing $200m domestically, in contrast. It’s only $20m or so behind the domestic numbers of Venom. Another highly hyped awards wannabe, The Front Runner went wide to 807 theatres but only made $630k - that’s a $781 per screen average. For all the talk of this being a movie for ‘the times’, it seemed nobody was all that revved up for a political scandal story so soon after the midterms. Methinks Vice will fare better there.

The indie hit of the weekend in limited release was Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Favourite - note the accurate spelling - which made $420k from 4 theatres - a staggering $105k per theatre average! A new peak for 2018! Olivia Colman’s Oscar season is going to be very fun.

The coming week sees the release of Anna and the Apocalypse and The Possession of Hannah Grace. A quiet week, to be sure. Wait until the week before Christmas for the real madness. Oh, it’s coming.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.

What films did you watch this weekend? Let us know in the comments.