Box Office Breakdown for weekend of 12/22/24
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Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Fails to Reach Expected Heights
Before getting started, it must be stated that, this being the weekend before Christmas, there is a good reason to speculate why Sonic the Hedgehog 3 had a worse Saturday at the box office than expected and ultimately wasn’t able to set the franchise record domestic opening, as many had been projecting it would based on the early returns. Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was able to make about $62,000,000 domestically and does not open internationally until Christmas Day or later, depending on the country. This means that tracking the film’s box office will be a bit more difficult as much of my charting relies upon the releases for the movies being mostly synchronous with one another.
When comparing this film to the previous releases, it fell short by about $10 million up against Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s adjusted $73,817,075 domestic opening and only about $6 million short of Sonic the Hedgehog’s (2020) $68,130,478. If we take into account the massive increase in ticket sales over the last few years, the third installment is still very clearly in 3rd place when compared to its predecessors. For the record, I personally believe that based on the positive word-of-mouth and the current 82% “Most Excellent” score on Criticless, this movie will easily dominate the Christmas box office and still has a chance to outperform the previous films. The big question mark is still international because of the delayed release… but there is hope for a good showing from those areas. With an estimated budget of $122 million, this is a decent start for Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
According to the-numbers.com, the top 5 this weekend domestically were:
- Sonic the Hedgehog 3 ($62 million as a new release)
- Mufasa: The Lion King ($35 million as a new release)
- Wicked (40% drop in 5th weekend)
- Moana 2 (51% drop in 4th weekend)
- Homestead ($6 million as a new release)
Mufasa Flops Big
On the opposite end of this weekend’s box office is the Disney prequel that it seems no one was asking for, Mufasa: The Lion King. This movie opened to only $35,000,000 domestically and a notably weak $87,200,000 from the international markets. Though it is still way too early to make a firm prediction about whether Mufasa will make any money or just how much money it will likely lose, the writing seems to be on the wall for the final Disney release of 2024.
In a year when Disney saw a comeback theatrically with massive billion-dollar hits like Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine, there were many who expected Mufasa to finish the year off strong for the company. Had these same people asked me or others in our community, we would have likely told them not to count their chickens and that there were a lot of good reasons to speculate that this would not be the same kind of success they saw back in 2019 with the “live-action” animated remake of the beloved 90s fully animated film. To be frank, however, I do not think anyone could have projected an opening this bad, especially amongst the international audiences who have come to the rescue of at least a couple of domestic flops this year. With an estimated budget of about $200 million, Mufasa currently stands as a -$245,870,000 flop. While one could argue that the film was only just released and there is still a lot of time left in the Christmas holiday season, for anyone to suggest that Mufasa is doing fine and not in any danger… that would be an incredibly ignorant take
If you want further analysis on these or any other films, check out the full charting I do over at my website. Have a wonderful rest of your day, and, as always, God bless!
(If you ever want further insight into my methodology, see my previous articles HERE and HERE and the RCC method I use to break down movies internationally HERE.)
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