Battle at the Box Office 12/11/23
It was a huge weekend for Japan at the domestic box office as the latest from Studio Ghibli, The Boy and The Heron, took the top spot while Godzilla Minus One held strong in third place.
The Boy and The Heron, potentially the final film from the legendary Hayao Miyazaki took in $12.9 million over the weekend. It’s the biggest non-IP-based anime opening in domestic history and the biggest opening ever domestically for Studio Ghibli. The previous high was less than half of what The Boy and The Heron opened to, Arietty’s $6.4 million back in 2012. Unless it absolutely craters in the coming weekend, it should easily become the highest-grossing Studio Ghibli movie of all time domestically. Worldwide, The Boy and The Heron has $87.4 million so far.
The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes continued to hold strong with a 34% drop from last weekend and staying in second place with another $9.2 million. It now has $135.5 million domestically and $266.4 million worldwide.
Godzilla Minus One expanded to more theaters over the weekend and only dropped 27% from last weekend’s domestic opening with another $8.5 million. It has $25.5 million domestically for two weeks out and a global total of $48.5 million. Given that it had a shockingly low budget of $15 million, it’s a major success for Toho and the studio said as long as people keep showing up, it will continue to play in as many theaters as they can get. Having finally seen it this past weekend, it lives up to all the hype and is one of the year’s best movies.
Trolls Band Together and Wish rounded out the top 5. Wish has $105.5 million worldwide but needs realistically close to $400 million worldwide to break even in the theatrical window, which is basically impossible and it will be another disappointing flop for Disney.
Seeing a massive drop was Renaissance, which topped the box office last weekend but fell 77% to sixth place. Clearly, the demand for Beyonce’s concert film was nowhere near the level of Taylor Swift and/or fans only went out once to see it during last weekend’s opening and aren’t going back again like Swifties did for The Eras Tour.
Further down the list, Waitress: The Musical opened in 8th place with a five-night run starting on Thursday. It took in $3.2 million from 1,214 theaters and considering it was a limited engagement of a live stage recording, that’s a strong performance.
The Per Theater average went to Yorgos Lathimos’ new film Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, which took in $73,470 in each of the 9 theaters it was playing in over the weekend.