We’re hearing that bad weather in the Midwest significantly impacted Thursday grosses with Winter Storm Elliott intensifying into a bomb cyclone. As of this morning, more than 1 million customers are without power across the country, around 4K flights cancelled and wind chill in the -20 to -30 degree as the country gets hammered by severe winter conditions.
Avatar: The Way of Water was up only 1% from Wednesday with $14.5M for a week’s total of $197.5M at 4,202 theaters, 4% behind the first week of Top Gun: Maverick which, natch, was boosted by it Memorial Day Monday.
Today in its 8th day at the box office, James Cameron’s Avatar: The Way of Water will cross $200M. Other films that have taken that long to cross the double century mark stateside include Captain Marvel (final gross $426.8M), Jurassic World: Dominion (final $376M) and Thor: Love and Thunder (final $343.2M).
Christmas weekend will be wonky at the box office with Christmas Eve falling on Saturday. Not only is that a down day at the box office, with most movies off -45% to -55% from the day prior, but there’s 11 NFL games alone on Saturday.
Universal/Dreamworks Animation’s Puss in Boots: The Last Wish made $2.9M in its second day, -9%, for a two-day total of $6.1M at 4,099 theaters.
Tri-Star/Black Label’s Whitney Houston biopic I Wanna Dance With Somebody minted $730K from 3,093 locations off previews that began at 2PM yesterday. While no official comps are being given, that preview cash isn’t that far from the $800K that West Side Story made on its Thursday night off showtimes that began at 5PM ($10.5M 3-day) and its just under what Universal’s all-femme title Sisters did on its Thursday night back in Dec. 17, 2015 ($769K) which resulted in a $13.9M opening. I Wanna Dance With Somebody is expected to open to around $12M over four days at 3,550 locations.
Third place Thursday went to Disney/Marvel Studio’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever at 3,200 sites with $906K, +1% from Wednesday and a running total at end of week 6 of $422.6M.
Fourth is Universal’s Violent Night at 3,528 theaters with $792K, -4% from Wednesday, and running domestic total of $38.4M at end of week 3. The genre action title is 137% ahead of Universal’s Black Christmas which finaled at $16.2M and $200K ahead of the studio’s 2015 holiday horror comedy Krampus at the same point in time which ultimately finaled its domestic box office at $42.7M.
A24’s The Whale ranked 5th at 603 theaters with $273K, -60% from Wednesday, and a running total through the end of week 2 of $1.55M.
No grosses reported this AM for Babylon‘s previews.