Box Office Report: In Possession of a Quiet Weekend

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | December 2, 2018 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | December 2, 2018 |

There wasn’t a whole lot going on at the box office this week. Everyone’s biding their time until the onslaught of Christmas, which will bring us Transformers, singing nannies, fish conversations, and big swinging dick (Cheney). That gave Disney another week at the top as Ralph Breaks the Internet held onto the number one spot, even as its gross was sliced in half from the previous weekend. With an added $25.7m to the domestic gross, which now totals $119m, this film hasn’t done Incredibles 2 business or anything, although it’s keeping relatively in line with what Moana did during its run, but there’s still time. Never under-estimate Disney animation. Another animation did well this weekend. The Grinch jumped from 3 to 2, taking over Creed 2 - say that ten times faster after a few drinks! Crucially, Universal’s movie cost $75m to make while Disney’s cost $175m. Get those profit margins wider, guys!

As for Creed 2, it saw its gross fall 52% from last weekend but for a film that opened so big and for a sequel, these are numbers MGM were expecting. If this is indeed the true finale to the Rocky series then everyone involved can be proud.

In its 3rd week of release, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald saw a 61% drop and made only $11.2m domestically. It’s still about $65m off of recouping its budget, which is fascinating given how much Warner Bros. seem to have riding on this franchise actually making it to five films. Then again, 74.1% of its overall gross is from foreign numbers and those have driven it to just under $520m, so they may not be too fussed. I’m not sure it’ll catch up to the total gross of the first film though. Will this be enough to get the third film off the ground? Are you sick of this franchise already? Why won’t Johnny Depp go away? So many questions.

Bohemian Rhapsody has made $164m domestically and soared past $569m overall. Dammit. And once again - fuck Bryan Singer.

One of the only films to get a wide release this week was The Possession of Hannah Grace, and it did way better than expected, taking in $6.5m this weekend. As with many of these low-budget horrors, all it really needs is a good opening couple of weeks and then it can sail on to a quiet end. The joys of having no competition!

The Favourite continues on from its top notch opening weekend. As it expanded to 34 theatres, it jumped from 19 to 13 and made $1.1m this weekend - an impressive per-screen average of $32,500. As I type this up, it’s currently doing very well at the British Independent Film Awards so keep an eye on this one.

Is there a better pitch for a film than a Scottish Christmas zombie musical? If you have one, write that idea down now! Anna and the Apocalypse did solid business this weekend, opening to 5 theatres and making just over $50k. But seriously - Scottish Christmas zombie musical! It’s like they filmed my daily life.

This coming week sees the release of Mary Queen of Scots, Vox Lux, and the 25th anniversary re-release of Schindler’s List.

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

What films did you watch this weekend? Answers in the comments!