The box office battle between Disney’s Mufasa – the Lion King prequel – and Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 seems to be over before it even began. According to Deadline, Sonic 3 more than doubled Mufasa’s grosses, with a $70.5 million opening (which is right in line with what we predicted). However, Mufasa is under-performing badly, with it on track for an opening weekend in the $36-8 million range. When you consider that the 2019 Lion King opened with $191 million, that’s a truly abysmal number, although, with the Christmas season in full swing, it should still have no trouble topping at least $100 million domestically. It did manage an A-minus CinemaScore rating, so word-of-mouth should be decent and give it legs into 2025.
Meanwhile, Moana 2 and Wicked are neck-in-neck, with each expecting to pull in around $14 million for the weekend. However, the movie in 5th place is a pretty big shock, with Sony’s pricey Kraven the Hunter on track to drop an obscene 72% this weekend, for a 7th place finish behind Gladiator II. In fact, Angel Studios’ faith-based Homestead, which is basically a feature-length pilot for their new streaming series, is going to wind up in the top five, grossing a very respectable $5.5 million on less than 2000 screens. While it won’t wind up as one of their top grossers, this is a solid number, with Angel having a knack for appealing to the faith-based audience, although none of their films since Sound of Freedom has really crossed over to mainstream audiences.
Another movie tanking badly this weekend is Lord of the Rings: The War of Rohirrim, which is also on track to lose at least 70% of its audience for a ninth-place finish. It likely won’t even pass $10 million domestically. OUCH. That said, Kraven is still the bigger bomb of the two, with it sporting a $125 million price tag. It likely won’t top $25 million domestically, which makes it a far bigger bomb than Madame Web.
What are you seeing this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.
What’s Not Allowed