Hollywood’s lucrative holiday movie season kicked off with two event films which both connected with their respective audiences delivering a potent one-two punch driving the box office to its best sales in three months. Disney’s animated action-comedy Big Hero 6 opened at number one with an estimated $56.2M from 3,761 locations for a muscular $14,943 average.
It was the second best toon opening of the year trailing only the $69.1M bow of February’s The LEGO Movie which finished its domestic run with about 3.75 times that amount. The PG-rated Hero was based on a lesser-known Marvel property and came into the marketplace as a crowd-pleaser that could play to many audiences. Reviews were very good and paying audiences also were quite pleased as the CinemaScore grade was a sturdy A.
Families made up the bulk of the audience at 72%. Given the comic-based nature of the source material, and that the new sci-fi pic Interstellar lured away fanboys this weekend, Big Hero 6 could branch out in the weeks to come to non-family moviegoers. Baymax and pals had broad appeal as the male/female split was dead even. Studios love to open toon tentpoles in early November for the long runs that could follow boosted by school holidays this month like Veterans Day and Thanksgiving. Breaking $200M domestic is certainly possible. Hero opened a few notches ahead of the $49M debut weekend of Wreck-It Ralph, another fanboy-type toon unleashed in early November. Saturday’s healthy 52% boost indicates good word-of-mouth.
Globally, Big Hero 6 will take its time to roll out with many key territories waiting for the Christmas season or even January for its openings. Russia launched two weeks before the U.S. to capitalize on local school holidays and has grossed a solid $18.2M to date. Japan opens December 20 and should be one of the top-grossing territories since Disney toons do gangbusters there plus Hero has many Japanese influences in the film. China has not yet been dated.
Opening in second place was Christopher Nolan’s new sci-fi epic Interstellar with Paramount reporting a weekend estimate of $50M over the Friday-to-Sunday period. Early shows on IMAX screens and film prints began on Tuesday night putting the cume at $52.2M. Playing in 3,561 locations, including 368 IMAX screens, the PG-13 saga averaged a robust $14,041 per theater over the weekend period. Reviews were generally good, but were not positive across the board.
The $50M weekend figure reported by Paramount was an aggressive number. It includes a very optimistic 21% decline for Sunday which is much lower than what all other studios are reporting for their wide releases this weekend. Other live-action pics are all projecting Sunday drops of 35-50%. Even animated films which normally hold up well Saturday-to-Sunday are projecting larger Sunday declines. And on this same weekend last year, even with Monday being a holiday, all live-action films in the top ten suffered Sunday declines of 32% or higher. Mathematically and historically speaking, it would be extremely unusual for Interstellar at this time of year to post a Sunday drop in the neighborhood of 21%.
However, that low drop does conveniently make the weekend estimate a nice and even round number which looks better in news reports than something in the $40M range. Should Interstellar‘s Sunday drop like most other live-action films do at this time of year, the weekend gross would actually be closer to $48M. Fall films have football to compete with on Sundays which are especially distracting for movies that appeal to older men. Plus schools are in session on Monday so comparing Interstellar to summer films would not give a true picture.
Opening weekend Sunday drops for other live-action films in the October-November corridor include 35% for Captain Phillips, 34% for Gravity, 31% for 2012, and 29% for Skyfall which had an observed holiday Monday for Veterans Day. Since all box office numbers reported on Sundays are just “estimates,” the final grosses to be reported on Monday will indicate the true performance. Many industry insiders questioned Paramount’s reporting earlier this year for the opening weekend of its high-profile sequel Transformers: Age of Extinction. Most with access to the same data pegged the weekend at roughly $98M (still a great number) but the studio reported an even $100M.
Despite what final numbers will show, Interstellar still opened with muscle especially for an original 2D film that runs nearly three hours. Starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, and Michael Caine, the space travel saga skewed older as expected with studio research showing that 75% of the crowd was over 25. Cross-gender appeal was strong – especially for this genre – as the male/female split was 52/48. Interstellar drew upon the starpower of the cast as well as the brand name of Nolan who ranks today as among the top directors in Hollywood.
Compared to other sci-fi films, Interstellar opened a bit below Gravity‘s $55.8M and the $51.1M of Prometheus. Both of those benefitted from 3D surcharges, especially the Sandra Bullock hit which made the bulk of its cash from 3D screens. So it can be argued that Interstellar and Gravity both attracted roughly the same amount of people on opening weekend. Gravity was about half as long of a film, but with multiplexes having more flexibility in early November to offer multiple screens, there were plenty of showtimes to absorb demand for Interstellar. Nolan’s last film The Dark Knight Rises had the same length as Interstellar but still opened to a massive $160.9M. Avatar, an original sci-fi film from a beloved director, also had a similar length and opened to $77M. It had 3D surcharges, but also lower 2009 prices, half as many IMAX screens, plus a major blizzard shutting down many theaters. Long movies can still open huge.
The wide release kicked off on Friday with $17M but Saturday increased by only 8% to $18.4M. And this is with some of that upfront demand being taken away by the special midweek showings. Gravity saw a much better 32% Saturday boost. Add in Interstellar‘s so-so B+ CinemaScore and it becomes unclear what future weeks will have in store. The sci-fi pic has generated a wide variety of opinions from those who have seen it. Luckily, it has only mild competition on its second weekend.
More than one third of the weekend gross for Interstellar came from higher-priced premium large format screens. 368 IMAX screens grossed $13.4M for 26% of the total while other PLF screens collected $5.2M, or 10.5%. Nolan has long used IMAX cameras to film parts of his movies.
Overseas, Interstellar commanded a terrific $80M opening weekend from 62 markets for a worldwide launch of $132.2M. All key territories opened day and date this weekend except for China which launches Wednesday and Japan which opens on November 22. Korea easily led the international markets with $14.1M. IMAX delivered a hot $7.2M from 206 screens which will be joined later this week by over 170 additional screens in China. Budgeted at $165M, Interstellar looks well on its way to grossing north of $500M worldwide which is a tough stratosphere to reach for a non-franchise film.
Leading the fall leftovers was the unstoppable David Fincher thriller Gone Girl which slipped only 28% in its sixth weekend to an estimated $6.1M. The Fox release has now amassed an impressive $145.4M which is the best ever for the director and now third highest in Ben Affleck’s career after his big-budget Michael Bay flicks Armageddon ($201.6M in 1998) and Pearl Harbor ($198.5M in 2001). Two-time chart-topper Ouija followed with an estimated $6M, off 44%, for a new total of $43.5M for Universal.
Well-reviewed indie pics with wide distribution followed. St. Vincent dipped only 21% to an estimated $5.7M while Nightcrawler fell 47% in its sophomore frame to an estimated $5.5M. New sums are $27.4M for The Weinstein Co. and $19.8M for Open Road.
Some top Hollywood stars took the next few slots. Brad Pitt’s tank drama Fury grossed an estimated $5.5M, down 38%, putting Sony at $69.3M to date. The Keanu Reeves actioner John Wick dropped 49% to an estimated $4.1M giving Lionsgate $34.7M so far.
Kidpics rounded out the top ten. The Steve Carell hit Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day declined by 47% to an estimated $3.5M for a $59.2M total for Disney. Fox’s toon The Book of Life tumbled 66% with Baymax stealing away kids this weekend. The estimated $2.8M take lifted the cume to $45.2M.
Another Oscar hopeful saw a successful platform launch as the Stephen Hawking drama The Theory of Everything bowed to an estimated $207,000 from only five locations in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto for a scorching $41,400 average. Earning good but not great reviews, the Focus release will slowly expand in the weeks ahead. Eddie Redmayne is currently seen as one of the front-runners in the Best Actor race this awards season.
The top ten films grossed an estimated $145.4M which was down 8% from last year when Thor: The Dark World opened at number one with $85.7M; and down 9% from 2012 when Skyfall debuted in the top spot with $88.4M.
