Call it sweet revenge?
After getting knocked off the top of the box-office mountain by Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom last weekend, Wonka—a movie featuring Roald Dahl’s legendary candymaker—reclaimed the top spot and covered it in sprinkles. The PG-rated musical earned an estimated $22.7 million in North America during the traditional three-day weekend, and it added another $6.8 million on New Year’s Day to push its holiday weekend total to $29.5 million. Talk about a rich finish.
In three weekends worth of work, Wonka has earned $140.5 million stateside, and $384.9 million globally. So another box-office victory is really just icing on the cake.
Meanwhile, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom reminds us that superhero power—at least at the box office—isn’t quite what it used to be.
Aquaman made an $18.3 million splash over three days and $23.5 million over four. That’s not an atrocious showing by 2023 superhero standards, mind you: Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom has earned $81.8 million overall, and my guess is it’ll pass both The Marvels ($84.5 million) and The Flash ($108.1 million) before it’s done. But it won’t come close to the $335.1 million that the original Aquamanmade; Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom’s performance looks significantly … scaled down.
Migration, meanwhile, proves that there’s money to be made in Mallards. The PG-animated film earned $17 million over three days, and $22 million over four. That’s a lot of bucks for these ducks—and it cemented Universal Pictures’ standing as the year’s top-earning studio. Universal had two mega-hits in 2023 (The Super Mario Bros. Movie, with $754.9 million, and Oppenheimer at $326 million) and several more moderate successes to earn $1.9 billion.
Newcomer The Color Purple earned a fourth-place finish with $11.7 million (over three days; $14.9 million over four)—one of several newbies to make their presence felt at the box office. The Boys in the Boat paddled to sixth place with $8.4 million, and Ferrari chugged to eighth with $4.1 million. Not sure how distributor Neon felt about that eighth-place finish, but methinks that Enzo Ferrari himself would not have been pleased.
Anyone But You closed out the top five, by the way, with $8.8 million.
One Response
“Wonka” is simply a much, MUCH better movie than “Aquaman,” and it’s also been getting much greater word of mouth. I’ve seen a lot of online posts praising “Wonka.” I have yet to see anyone post about “Aquaman.” And it may well be that people are getting worn out by CGI-driven superhero extravaganzas. Unless you keep up with ALL the MCU movies, you may be lost. The last one I saw was “Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness,” and I simply had no clue what the heck was going on.