Box Office Update: Mufasa and Sonic 3 battle too close to call

Last Updated on January 2, 2025
Sonic Mufasa

The battle between Mufasa: The Lion King and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 continues to be wildly unpredictable. In this week’s box office predictions, we assumed that Mufasa, which looked like it was tanking last weekend, would rally to a number-one finish. While that still seems like the most likely result, the difference in box office will only be around one million dollars or so. According to Deadline, it looks like Mufasa will eke out a win with a five-day haul of $61 million compared to Sonic’s $59 million. Yet, as for the weekend itself, Sonic looks like it will actually come out ahead of Mufasa with $37 million to the latter’s $35 million. That said, with the numbers so close, anything goes…

Nosferatu is proving to be a major success for Focus Features, with it aiming for a $20 million weekend and a $39 million five-day haul. Wicked looks like it’ll hit fifth place with an outstanding $32 million over five days, which is raising eyebrows as Universal’s sending the movie to PVOD on New Year’s Eve, despite the film still raking in big bucks in theaters. Moana 2 shouldn’t be too far behind with $27 million over the five day holiday. A Complete Unknown should strum its way to sixth place. While that doesn’t sound great, the holiday box office has been so good that the movie will likely make about $25 million over the five-day holiday. With an A-CinemaScore rating, word-of-mouth should be excellent. With another holiday weekend coming up, A Complete Unknown could end up scoring well north of $50 million by the end of the holidays, which would position it to turn a nice profit for Searchlight, who hasn’t had a breakout hit like this in years.

We’ll be back tomorrow with a full write-up of the weekend box office!

About the Author

Editor-in-Chief - JoBlo

Favorite Movies: Goodfellas, A Clockwork Orange, Boogie Nights, Goldfinger, Casablanca, Scarface (83 version), read more Heat, The Guns of Navarone, The Dirty Dozen, Pulp Fiction, Taxi Driver, Blade Runner, any film noir

Likes: Movies, LP's, James Bond, true hollywood memoirs, The Bret Easton read more Ellis Podcast, every sixties british pop band, every 80s new wave band - in fact just generally all eighties songs, even the really shit ones, and of course, Tom Friggin' Cruise!

The comment section exists to allow readers to discuss the article constructively and respectfully, focused on the topic at hand.

What’s Not Allowed

  • Abusive language, insults, or harassment toward other users or staff.
  • Hate speech of any kind is strictly prohibited.
  • Bickering, bullying, personal attacks, or baiting others to argue
  • Extended off-topic debates, especially those centered on politics or religion rather than the article topic
  • No AI content or SPAM