In early January, it can feel natural to view everything as a portent of what's to come in the next 12 months... but that's thankfully not the case with the box office. Annually, this is a time for the industry when blockbuster holdovers from the previous year do battle with low potential studio releases that are dumped into theaters. This weekend is a perfect model of that, with Paul King's Wonka holding on to its position in first place and Bryce McGuire's new horror movie Night Swim failing to inspire much excitement.
Check out the full Top 10 numbers in the chart below, and join me after for analysis.
With Another #1 Weekend, Wonka Is Creeping Its Way Into The Domestic Top 10 For 2023
For reasons to which I alluded in my opening paragraph, this is notably a special time of year at the box office where movies can do things that they can't at any other spot on the calendar. In the spring, summer, and fall, the release schedule is generally so packed with weekly new titles that it's hard for any single film to go on a big run, but that's not the case as the industry shifts from December into January.
If a title is popular enough, it can stay at the top of the box office week after week. In the last two years alone, we saw it happen with Jon Watts' Spider-Man: No Way Home and James Cameron's Avatar: The Way Of Water, and it appears that this year's big winner is Wonka.
While it was James Wan's Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom that was originally poised to dominate this period, Warner Bros. instead got a backup sleeper hit in their candy-coated musical starring Timotheé Chalamet. Since its debut in mid-December, Wonka has won the box office three out of four weekends, and it has grossed $164.7 million domestically thus far.
Thanks to the $14.4 million it brought in since Friday (via The Numbers), the movie has now surpassed the ticket sales of Francis Lawrence's The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes in the United States and Canada, and it is now positioned as the thirteenth biggest domestic release of 2023.
Thanks to the paved road that's ahead of it, the film should definitely hop up a few more spots before the end of its run, and it will almost definitely end up in the Top 10. It will only need to make about $8 million more to surpass Christopher McQuarrie's Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1 (which sits just ahead of it in twelfth place) and it will need to make about $24 million more to surpass Chad Stahelski's John Wick: Chapter 4 (which sits in eighth place).
As terrific as Wonka is doing domestically, it's doing even better abroad. The film has earned over $300 million overseas, and its worldwide box office total sits at $465.9 million. The feature wasn't cheap to make, as Variety reports that the production budget was $125 million (not counting publicity and marketing), but it would appear that the movie is going to get a significant return on investment for the studio.
With Blitz Bazawule's The Color Purple also earning $54.6 million to date domestically after coming out late last month (not to mention the blockbuster success of Greta Gerwig's Barbie), musicals have paid off well for Warner Bros. in 2023, and it will be curious to see how it influences project choices in the coming years.
Night Swim Has A Mild Opening Weekend, But It's Technically Another Win For Low-Budget Horror
Last year saw an interesting anomaly arrive at the box office, and it was called M3GAN. The film, produced by genre powerhouses Blumhouse and Atomic Monster, proved to not be typical January horror fare – which is to say bad and uninteresting. Instead, it was super buzzy, earned a positive response from critics, and it ended up being a big success. Made with a limited $12 million budget (per Deadline), the movie ended up making $30 million in its domesica opening weekend, and it finished its worldwide theatrical run earning over $180 million.
One year later, Blumhouse and Atomic Monster have delivered Night Swim as their latest January release... and it's most definitely a regression to the industry mean. As noted in my review for CinemaBlend, I am not a fan, and I am not alone in that perspective, as the critical response to the film has been rough in general. The lack of any hype has not done the movie any favors at the box office, as it made a tepid $12 million in the last three days.
Obviously Night Swim's numbers pale in comparison to what M3GAN did at the start of 2023, but there is one important thing that it shares in common with the killer doll feature: it was inexpensive to produce. According to Variety, the new release cost a tad bit more than M3GAN ($15 million), and its opening weekend numbers put it on a quick path to profitability. It may not stick around for long in the Top 5, but it will make enough money for it to be considered an early box office success in 2024.
Fingers are crossed that the upcoming slate of horror movies provides greater quality to earn even better ticket sales.
Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom Crosses $100 Million Domestically
That brings us to Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom, which, as noted, isn't the box office hit that it was meant to be (what with it being the follow-up to the biggest DC Comics movie of all time). The Jason Momoa-led blockbuster had a soft opening weekend followed by a second place finish to close out 2023... but in the hunt for silver linings, it can at least be said that the film has now grossed over $100 million domestically.
The $10 million that the superhero blockbuster has made since Friday has pushed it into the nine figure club – and for what it's worth, there were only 23 other movies from 2023 that were able to do that. Globally, the film (made for north of $200 million) has made $334.8 million to date.
Next weekend, a shakeup in the Top 10 may be taking place, as four features will be dropped into cinemas nationwide: David Ayer's The Beekeeper, Jeymes Samuel's The Book of Clarence, Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.'s Mean Girls, and the theatrical debut of of Pete Docter's Soul. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see the outcome, and check out our 2024 Movie Release Schedule to start planning your next big screen adventure.
