Japan takes over the top of the North American box office, with strong showings of The Boy and the Heron and Godzilla Minus One.
(Still catching up)
It's rare for a film not originating in the United States to top the North American box office. There are plenty of films that send their casts and crews globetrotting, but most of those productions originate in Hollywood. Even franchises that seem very British, such as the Harry Potter and the James Bond movies, are produced primarily with American money. However, the growing popularity of anime in the United States and Canada has made the Japanese film industry a surprising player when it comes to US box office, a trend that is very much reflected in this week's numbers.
Topping the chart is The Boy and the Heron, the latest, and almost certainly last, film from Japanese master Hayao Miyazaki. The supernatural drama, which reflected at least in some ways Miyazaki's actual childhood, became only the fourth anime title to top the US box office, and the first not to be based on an anime TV series. Its $13 million opening means it is already the second-highest-grossing Miyazaki movie in North America, trailing only Ponyo, which topped out at $15.1 million back in 2009. Anime titles can burn out quickly, so this one may stall out around $30 million, but it will still be considered a major success. It will likely also be competing with Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse for the Oscar for Animated Feature.
Staying steady in second is The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes, which is having a fairly leggy run though the holidays. The prequel brought in $9.3 million to bring its total to $135.6 million. If it can retain screens until Christmas week, this could find itself topping out at around $175 million.
Coming in third is the other prominent Japanese film in wide release, Godzilla Minus One. The monster film, which, like The Boy and the Heron, deals with post-WWII Japanese society and themes of horror and loss. Unlike Heron, however, which is available both with its Japanese language tract with subtitles and in an English dub, Godzilla is only available in Japanese with subtitles, making the film's strong performance a surprise. It took in $8.6 million for a ten-day total of $25.6 million, making it easily the biggest subtitled movie of the year in North America. Indeed, it's already 8th on the list of highest-grossing non-English movies in North America, and looks certain to take down at least the next two films above it on the list, Amile and Pan's Labyrinth, before it finishes its run.
In fourth, Trolls Band Together continued its run of being the preferred family animated film out at the moment, bringing in $6.1 million for a total of $82.3 million. It seems likely to make it to $100 million, but with more major family films coming down the pike in the coming weeks, that total is not guaranteed.
After opening at #1 last week, Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce utterly collapsed in week #2, falling a whopping 75% to $5.5 million. Its ten-day total stands at $28.5 million. Forget challenging Taylor Swift; Renaissance is not going to make much more than a quarter of her first weekend gross.
Disney is undoubtably wishing for a redo on the holiday season, as Wish continues to fall further behind, taking in $5.3 million for a gross of $49.4 million. Napoleon isn't doing any better, as it brought in $4.1 million for a total of $53 million.
In 2007, Waitress became the little movie that could, overcoming the tragic death of its director and co-star Adrienne Shelly to make nearly $20 million during the summer of 2007. In 2016, a musical version of the movie would premiere on Broadway, where it would be nominated for four Tony Awards, including Best Musical. The show would run for nearly 4 years and over 1,500 performances, before a short revival in the Fall of 2021, starring the show's composer Sara Bareilles, was staged in order to film it. That filmed production was released this weekend by Fathom Events and Bleeker Street to a surprisingly sweet reaction, taking in $2.9 million, which may just be a record for a filmed presentation of a Broadway musical in theaters. The film is a limited run, so don't expect it to earn much more pie, but this is still very successful.
Bollywood action title Animal came in 9th for the weekend, taking in $2.5 million for a ten-day total of $11.8 million. In tenth, Christian sci-fi thriller The Shift brought in $2.1 million for a ten-day total of $8.5 million. Outside the Top 10, actioner Silent Night brought in $1.7 million for a ten-day total of $5.8 million.
Also outside the Top 10, Disney/Fox decided to try to end the debate about whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie by giving it a mid-December re-release. It made only $0.9 million, indicating that most people were content to just watch their Blu-Ray copy (since it's not currently streaming on any major service).
As mentioned last week, Hollywood has gotten into the habit of bunching up all their major titles right before/on Christmas, which is why at least 7 films are going to go wide between December 20 and December 25, but only one new film is going wide today. However, this one is one of the biggest titles of the holidays, namely Wonka, starring Timothée Chalamet in the portrait of the chocolatier as a young man. Critics are somewhat flabbergasted that the film (from Paul King, who directed Paddingtons 1 & 2) is actually pretty good, and Chalamet got himself a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Musical or Comedy, following in the footsteps of both Gene Wilder and Johnny Depp, both of whom were also nominated in the category for their turn as Willy. Traditionally, December releases have opened rather modestly but earn their cash thanks to the post-Christmas bonanza and strong legs through the cinematic wasteland that is January. However, recent years have seen massive, summer-like openings in this month. Tracking, however, indicates that Wonka will debut more modestly. Will it be a sweet opening weekend for Wonka? Or will this chocolate end up being bitter? We'll find out next week.
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