Seven new films are arriving from today to battle it out at the box-office for the Christmas holiday, with none expected to come close to knocking Sony Pictures’ “Spider-Man: No Way Home” off its perch.
On Monday, ‘Spidey’ collected a major $37 million domestically and $41.2 million overseas. In just four days, the film has managed to pull in a remarkable $680 million and is certain to be the first pandemic-era release to cross $1 billion in ticket sales (and doing so without opening in China).
Over the five-day Xmas weekend frame, the film is expected to generate at least a further $90 million domestically and because demand for the film is so high, the other newcomers will be left scrambling for the scraps (and screens).
Both “The Matrix Resurrections” and “Sing 2” are expected to generate around $40 million each (and in Matrix’s case up to $50 million) between their openings today through to Sunday. Likely coming in fourth will be “The King’s Man” which hopes to collect $15-20 million over the five days.
Then things start getting tight. Feel good dramas “American Underdog” and “A Journal for Jordan” are targeting sub-$10 million openings, while George Clooney’s “The Tender Bar” may not even report its box-office grosses due to it being essentially a qualifying theatrical run ahead of its Amazon Prime release on January 7th.
Then there are the holdovers. Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Licorice Pizza” is expanding its footprint nationally, but it’s not clear how the film will perform outside the major cities. The low opening of “Nightmare Alley” and the woeful 68% second-weekend drop of “West Side Story” suggests both those films won’t have a rosy Christmas.
Source: Variety
