While Warner Bros. deserves credit for deadlifting the 2023 holiday box office with three fresh films in theaters, the absence of a major December hit like “Avatar: The Way of Water” or “Spider-Man: No Way Home” is still taking its toll on what is supposed to be a major revenue period for theaters.
Combined, Warner Bros.’ “Wonka,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” and “The Color Purple” have contributed $185 million to overall domestic grosses over the past 12 days. The Timothée Chalamet-fronted musical “Wonka” is leading the group with $102 million grossed since its Dec. 15 release.
When breaking down early returns for the critical moviegoing period between Christmas and New Year’s Day, the numbers don’t shape up to years past.
According to data from Box Office Mojo, the top 10 highest-grossing films on Dec. 26 combined for $41.1 million in grosses, down approximately 12% from Dec. 26, 2022 when the long-awaited “Avatar: The Way of Water” soared in theaters even as a blizzard slowed audience turnout in much of the U.S. and Canada.
Go back to the day after Christmas in other years, aside from the pandemic year of 2020, and the comparisons get even worse. Dec. 26 grosses for the top 10 films reached $52.9 million in 2021 (led by “Spider-Man: No Way Home”), $68.4 million in 2019 (led by “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker”), $55.5 million in 2018 (led by “Aquaman”) and $70.7 million in 2017 (led by “Star Wars: The Last Jedi”).
To be fair, the ebbs and flows of the holiday box office vary greatly from year to year depending on how the calendar shapes up. For theaters and studios, the ideal year is when Christmas Day falls on a Wednesday, as new releases hit theaters when audience turnout is usually at its lowest, allowing for the buzz from that midweek release to carry over into a strong weekend. This year, with Christmas Day falling on a Monday, that calendar boost for the marketplace was not as strong.
But it also can’t be denied that theaters don’t have a film that can gross over $300 million domestic in theaters right now, as they did with “Avatar 2” and “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” In the late 2010s, Disney’s “Star Wars” films were the big moneymakers that soared up the annual charts with the exception of 2018 when “Aquaman” led business with $335 million domestic and $1.15 billion worldwide.
“Wonka” is showing signs of becoming a respectable box office success for Warner Bros. that will leg out well into January, but it won’t reach the heights of those films mentioned above. Theaters also cannot count on “Aquaman 2” reaching the heights of its predecessor. It has received the same middling audience-reception scores as the other DC films that have come out this year, and its five-day total was a paltry $40 million compared to the first film’s $106 million five-day take.
And the worst part is that a holiday period bereft of megahits will give way to a threadbare early 2024 slate. Paramount’s “Mean Girls” is the best of a sparse bunch of new releases in January and February.
Without a huge hit like “Avatar 2,” theaters are facing a two-month drought with little holdover support to mitigate the likely low returns from new releases. Numbers probably won’t pick up in a meaningful way until March, when “Dune: Part Two” arrives.
