For all the blah blah that people don’t go to the movies before Christmas, and that moviegoing mushrooms from Christmas Day onward, two holdovers, Moana 2 and Wicked are expected to hold over quite well, with respectively $28M and $20M, -45% a piece, while two incoming fanboy movies fall apart: Sony Marvel’s $110M extended Spider-verse Kraven the Hunter and Warner Bros/New Line’s $30M feature animated movie Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim respectively with $15M+/- and $6M-$7M.
The single digit start for Lord of the Rings is in the vein of recent Sony Crunchy Roll films. Meanwhile, the $15M start for Kraven the Hunter is around where Sony Marvel’s Madame Web tanked back in February in its first three days. Moana 2 is going into her third week while Wicked is playing into its fourth.
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All four movies, along with Paramount’s tenth anniversary re-release of Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar are expected to share PLFs and Imax screens.
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Though Kraven the Hunter is the first R-rated in the Spider-verse and Lord of the Rings is PG-13, both are aimed at men 18-34. Both studios are counting on that 5-6x multiple that the holiday period brings to pull these movies to better futures. For those keeping score, Lord of the Rings was on this date first before Kraven the Hunter moved on back in April. Kraven the Hunter was originally scheduled to open on Jan. 13, 2023, then at one point was going to play the 4-day Labor Day holiday before settling here.
Kraven the Hunter originally set out costing before P&A $90M before escalating to its current cost due to the strikes and the start and stop of production. TSG has 50% of the J.C. Chandor-directed, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Russell Crowe-starring film about the son of a ruthless gangster father, Nikolai Kravinoff (Crowe), who starts him down a path of vengeance with brutal consequences, only to become the greatest hunter in the world. Thursday previews begin at 2PM at 2,800 locations for a 3,200 theater count by Friday. Reviews haven’t registered yet on Rotten Tomatoes for Kraven the Hunter, however, Deadline’s Pete Hammond says “a surprisingly good time” in what “turns out to be a spectacular action- and character-driven performance from Aaron Taylor-Johnson and some tight exciting filmmaking from director J.C. Chandor“.
Lord of the Rings was put into motion by the previous Warner Bros administration of Toby Emmerich. The feature was pushed forward to ensure that New Line didn’t lose the film adaptation rights to the J.R.R. Tolkien novels while the original filmmaking trio of Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens was kept in the mix. It’s the first animated movie back on the J.R.R. Tolkien property since the Saul Zaentz 1978 production, but it’s the first anime title. The movie was made by Warner Bros Television Animation and as an anime to keep the budget low. Directed by Kenji Kamiyama, the pic is set 183 years before the events chronicled in the original New Line Lord of the Rings trilogy, and it centers around the House of Helm Hammerhand, the mighty King of Rohan, a character from the appendix of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. Succession actor Brian Cox voices the protag.
Thursday pre-shows for Lord of the Rings are at 2,550 expanding to 3,500 theaters on Friday. Pic will play on Imax, Dolby, PLFs, 4DX and Dine-ins.
Meantime, similar to week, Wicked is beating Moana 2 in the weekdays. On Monday and Tuesday, the witches grossed $3.3M and $4.67M to the hula girl’s $2.5M and $4.2M. Running cume on the highest grossing feature take of a Broadway musical is $330.1M while Moana 2 stands at $306M.