The Grinch Has The Strength of Ten Grinches (Plus Two!) In Impressive Opening Weekend As Overlord And Girl In Spider's Web Underwhelm At The Box Office

And now, a look at Universal sharheolders after this strong opening weekend for The Grinch

The holiday season appears to be well underway if the opening weekend for The Grinch is any indication. This animated feature became the newest box office hit for Illumination Entertainment, which just keeps producing one box office sensation after another. Opening to $66 million, The Grinch scored the biggest opening weekend ever for a Christmas movie, the third-biggest opening weekend for an animated movie in November (only the $67 million bow of Frozen and the $70 million bow of The Incredibles were higher). This opening is 5% below the opening weekend of the last Illumination Dr. Seuss film The Lorax, but given that Christmas movies tend to have excellent legs, that's no biggie, The Grinch should be well on its way to, at the very least, a $220 million final domestic total, above the final domestic gross of The Lorax.


Universal and Illumination have gotten marketing their movies down to a science. Advertise them relentlessly for an 8-12 month long period of time (or 16 month long period of time in the case of Despicable Me 2) across the various media entities owned by Universal parent company Comcast (Comcast owned TV program Saturday Night Live name-dropped The Grinch in one of its sketches, for instance), sprinkle in some distinctive outdoor marketing that catches the eye, emphasize the presence of well-liked celebrities doing voice-over work in the film and presto! There's your box office hit! Reducing pieces of cinema to such mathematical formula concocted by marketing teams makes my stomach hurt, but Illumination isn't the first to approach filmmaking like this and they won't be the last if the box office success of The Grinch is any indication.

Bohemian Rhapsody went down just 40% in its second frame as it rocked out another $30.8 million, putting it past the $100 million domestic mark. It's already only the third music biopic ever to crack $100 million domestically and also only the third movie starring an LGBTQIA+ protagonist to cross the $100 million threshold domestically.  At this point, it looks like this Freddie Mercury movie is headed for a $160-170 million domestic finish.

In third place, we find another wide release newcomer, Overlord, which opened to just $10.1 million, which is 75% below the opening of Cloverfield from 2008 and down 58% from the opening of 10 Cloverfield Lane. On a $38 million budget, Paramount was clearly hoping for more from this project, which had a marketing campaign that emphasized gruesome zombie antics but didn't give as much character groundings nor as distinctive of a premise as the marketing for the two Cloverfield films that, like Overlord, hailed from Bad Robot. With a swarm of new releases coming out in the next ten days, it'll be tough for Overlord to hang onto its screens for long and it's likely looking at a disspointing domestic finish in the neighborhood of $25-30 million.

The Nutcracker and the Four Realms had a far steeper than usual second-weekend drop for a Christmas family movie, which can be chalked up to competing with that dastardly Grinch. Falling 53% this weekend (more than double what Disney's A Christmas Carol dropped in its second weekend nearly a decade ago), this new take on the Nutcracker mythos added $9.5 million to a domestic total that now stands at just $35.2 million.

Sony/Columbia's recent bid to try and make a franchise out of every possible title in their library has been a crapshoot so far. The rewards have been big for Venom and Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, Goosebumps 2 and Flatliners, though were less successful. The Girl in the Spider's Web is the newest misfire for this trend as it grossed just $8 million this weekend, a bow that puts it 33% behind the opening weekend of the first movie, which not only burned off pre-weekend demand by debuting on a Wednesday but was also premiering during the Christmas timeframe where movies can leg out big time. There's gonna be no such luck for Spider's Web, which will be lucky to crack $20 million domestically, a terrible total for a $43 million budgeted feature. This whole movie felt so misconceived from the get-go and it ended up being the second box office bust for Claire Foy in the span of a month following First Man. All around just terrible news for this film which is one of two major box office misses for Sony/Columbia this weekend (we'll talk about the other shortly).

Another weekend, another sensational hold for A Star Is Born, which dipped just 27% this frame for another $8 million and a phenomenal domestic total of $178 million, surpassing Crazy Rich Asians to become the biggest Warner Bros. title of 2018. If WB can keep this one in a substantial amount of screens through Thanksgiving, there's a good chance it could surpass $200 million domestically by the end of the month. In its second weekend, Nobody's Fool fell 52% for another $6.5 million and a $24.2 million domestic total to date, which puts it on track for one of the lowest domestic totals for a Tyler Perry directorial effort. Meanwhile, Venom dropped 38% this weekend to add $4.8 million to a domestic total that now stands at a massive $206.2 million. Halloween had another sizeable drop this weekend as it fell another 64% for a fourth weekend of $3.8 million, bringing its domestic total up to $156.8 million. Rounding out the top ten was The Hate U Give, which fell 38% for another $2 million for a $26.7 million, putting it on track for a solid domestic total just over $30 million.

Can You Ever Forgive Me? went into 391 locations this weekend and grossed an OK $1.4 million for a per-theater average of $3,772. Falling below the $5,000 per-theater average threshold before you enter wide release is never a great sign, but this Marielle Heller directed feature may still end up doing decent business when Fox Searchlight brings it into wide release over the Thanksgiving holiday frame. After four weekends of limited release, this motion picture has now grossed $3.6 million. Beautiful Boy actually did manage to expand into wide release this weekend, expanding into 777 locations and grossing another $1.4 million for a per-theater average of just $1,810. Amazon Studios was clearly hoping a slower roll-out (it went wide in its fifth weekend of release) could allow the film to hang around in theaters through Thanksgiving, but its middling per-theater average ensures it won't. Beautiful Boy has grossed $5 million domestically, making it the biggest movie for Amazon Studios as their own separate studio and the sixth biggest title ever for them.

Free Solo continued its trek towards the $10 million domestic box office mark with a seventh-weekend haul of $774,915 (a mere 22% dip from last weekend) and a domestic total so far of $8.1 million. In its third weekend of wide release, Hunter Killer collapsed, plummeting 79% and grossing just $730,000 for an anemic domestic total of $15.2 million. Boy Erased grossed $725,000 in its second weekend of limited release at 77 locations for a per-theater average of $9,416 and a $997,164 domestic total. That's a lower second-weekend per-theater average than the ones seen by fellow early November Focus Features dramas Loving and The Theory of Everything, but on the other hand, it's running only slightly behind the latter title (which went onto gross $35 million domestically) in terms of overall 10-day domestic total. The Old Man & The Gun grossed $470,000 this frame, a 53% drop from last weekend, taking it a $10.2 million domestic total, making it only the tenth limited release of 2018 to cross $10 million. Suspiria fell a harsh 66% in its third weekend of release, grossing just $326,250 for a domestic total of only $1.9 million. A Private War took in $201,400 this weekend from 38 locations for a per-theater average of just $5,035. It's looking doubtful Aviron gives this one much of a theatrical expansion in the coming Thanksgiving holiday frame, though I've been wrong plenty of times before. A Private War has now grossed just $283,843 after ten days of release. In its third weekend of release, Burning grossed $79,644 from 27 locations for a per-theater average of $2,950 and a domestic total to date of $198,796.

And then there's The Front Runner, the other Sony/Columbia box office misfire of the weekend. This new Jason Reitman directed motion picture grossed just $56,000 this weekend for a $14,000 per-theater average, which is, for comparison's sake, below the opening weekend per-theater average of Blaze from three months ago despite Blaze being a tiny indie movie hailing from IFC Films whereas The Front Runner is a star-studded moderately budgeted feature from Sony/Columbia. With these kinds of numbers, it's doubtful The Front Runner's planned Thanksgiving wide release (if it even happens) yields much in the way of results. Having grossed just $76,199 since it opened on Election Day, The Front Runner looks like it may end up as the fourth straight box office dud for director Jason Reitman. Oh, and this weekend, The Ballad of Buster Scruggs became the first ever Netflix movie to debut theatrically before it premieres on the streaming service. However, Netflix is refusing to either release box office figures for the film themselves or let others see box office figures for the feature, so the box office of Buster Scruggs (and, presumably, also the box office figures for future Netflix movies bowing in theaters first like Roma, Mowgli: King of the Jungle and Bird Box) will remain a mystery for the time being.

The top 12 movies this weekend grossed a total of $152.8 million, the fourth biggest weekend for this time of the year. Interestingly, the 2018 yearly domestic box office will soar past $10 billion by Tuesday, which, as far I know, is the fastest any year at the domestic box office has crossed the $10 billion mark.