Box Office Report: Night Swimming

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | January 8, 2024 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | January 8, 2024 |

Happy New Year! Apologies for the lack fo box office report for the past couple of weeks. Such is the side-effect of both Christmas and New Year’s Day falling on a Monday. We certainly saw a good slate of festive season movies, and now we’re into a brand new year. You know what that means? January dump month! That’s right: all the films the studios have no interest in are getting pushed into the second half of Winter, just so you know how little they care for them.

All of this means that Wonka had an easy ride into 2024, remaining at the top of the box office for the fourth week in a row with a total domestic gross of $164.6 million. I must admit, I thought this one was going to be a flop. It just seemed like something nobody wanted, but the reviews were strong, the brand name big enough to pull in skeptics, and also chocolate! It certainly withstood heavy competition, like Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom. Both are Warner Bros. movies and it was clear which one the studio actually gave a crap about. The DCEU has been left out to pasture, and the Aquaman sequel just didn’t make it. $100 million in three weeks domestically is nothing to sneeze at, but there’s no way this one is coming close to the $1 billion its predecessor made.

Warner Bros. also had The Color Purple, which has earned $54.6 million in a fortnight. It opened big but fell 59% in its second week. It might need some real awards gold on its shelves to make it over the next few weeks. January sucks for new releases, but it’s a big time for those Oscar contenders. The top ten includes the likes of The Iron Claw, Ferrari, and Poor Things. None of them are doing gangbusters business, and Ferrari looks set to be a real money loser for Neon, but this is also just what the market is like in 2024. Mid-budget adult fare will always struggle, a few exceptions aside.

The only major new release of this past week was the horror Night Swim. It was typical beginning-of-January fare: high concept set-up, low budget, poor reviews, but in the black after one weekend. It debuted at number two with $12 million from 3,250 theatres. That’s better than Aquaman 2, if nothing else. Job well done.

This coming week sees the release of horror film The Windigo, Biblical reinvention The Book of Clarence, and movie-musical Mean Girls.

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