How did November 2012 become the biggest November ever at the box office?

There are still a few days until Gay Christmas A.K.A. Halloween emerges. Understandably, people are still making every inch of the month dedicated to horror movies, candy, and enjoyably creative costumes that will make you hate gay Halloween. Don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to bust out my homemade Poison Ivy outfit for a Halloween night party. But let’s not forget, we’re approaching further major holidays after Halloween. They’re not as queer as the time of the year when everyone dresses slutty and eats candy (the two cornerstones of being gay). They also come with a bit more baggage than Halloween. One of them is explicitly connected to the horrors of colonialism and the dehumanizing treatment of indigenous people enduring today.

Still, there are further holidays on the way. I’m poking my head out from a mountain of pictures of queer women dressed as Demi Moore in The Substance and looking to what the rest of the year has to offer. After all, I’m many things, a bimbo, a leftist, and a die-hard fan of the Wu-Tang Clan. But I’m also a box office geek. November and December always offer so much to talk about in terms of box office. In the best of times, these years contributed as much as $2+ billion alone to the annual domestic box office. People need movies to see when they have time off, not to mention the holiday-themed launching of all-time big titles like Avatar or Twilight, has often turned these months into a license to print money. Want proof of that? Just look at November 2012, currently the biggest November of all time at the domestic box office.

One note: the grosses we’re discussing for November 2012 movies concern what they made in this month. If I reference their lifetime domestic grosses, I’ll make sure to emphasize that. Otherwise, we’re just talking about the amount of North American money these titles made in the 30 days comprising November 2012 per this Box Office Mojo chart.

November 2012 grossed $1.09 billion, a staggering sum that marked the first time in history November exceeded $1 billion domestically. How did this month get to that number? The answer is simple: a variety of options. Today, the arrival of one big blockbuster sends all other titles scattering. Major titles open alone on opening weekend and rarely face major competition in the following two weeks after they bow. It’s a consequence of major studios producing far fewer movies annually, thus ensuring there are fewer opportunities for counterprogramming. Studios are also adamant about avoiding getting run over by the latest Marvel/DC/Star Wars movie.

October 2024 showed the dangerous side of this approach. With a largely vacant release slate, nothing was around to compensate for Joker: Folie a Deux and Venom: The Last Dance coming in under expectations. In the past, The Fault in our Stars over-indexing could compensate for Edge of Tomorrow coming in under expectations over the same weekend. That reality doesn't exist anymore.

November 2012, meanwhile, kicked off with the animated family movie Wreck-It Ralph and R-rated Denzel Washington drama Flight opening on the same day. The following week, Skyfall hit theaters while The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part Two arrived seven days later. Expanding into wide release against Edward and Bella was Lincoln. That turned into a massive sleeper hit that grossed $74.2 million in this month alone.  Over Thanksgiving, Life of Pi, Rise of the Guardians, and Red Dawn all debuted drawing in wildly different audiences. In that same holiday frame, Silver Lining Playbooks began playing in 300+ locations. This provided a lucrative kick-off to its leggy box office run.

Look at the sheer variety of movies in the marketplace! Heck, just Lincoln nonchalantly opening the same day as the final Twilight movie feels like it’s from another planet. Just two years later, the decline of the mid-budget Hollywood movie was already apparent. This is when the penultimate Hunger Games movie opened against no new wide-release newcomers. In 2016, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them also had no major studio competition to contend with (The Edge of Seventeen and Bleed for This tried debuting in wide release from indie labels). Meanwhile, over the pre-Thanksgiving 2012 frame, theater owners reaped the rewards of variety. A final lucrative Twilight movie opening to $138 million AND an Abraham Lincoln movie grossing $21 million in its wide release expansion, what a concept!

In that same frame, Skyfall also added $41.1 million to the marketplace. Much like Twisters opening just before Deadpool & Wolverine this year, Skyfall and Breaking Dawn - Part Two demonstrated the virtues of opening wildly different blockbusters close together. The older-skewing Skyfall could peacefully co-exist with the teen-oriented Breaking Dawn. This level of versatility is something modern movie studios could take a cue from. No wonder November 16-18, 2012 was the second-biggest domestic weekend of 2012, only behind the first weekend of May 2012 when The Avengers broke the domestic opening weekend record.

November 2012 also benefited nicely from leggy October 2012 holdovers. These could help compensate for the month's newbie misfires (like The Man with the Iron Fists). Argo was the eighth-biggest movie of the month with a $35.2 million gross. This was despite being around for three weekends before November 2012 began. Sure, that's only 3.5% of November 2012's gross. However, that's still a nice chunk of change almost matching what newcomers Life of Pi and Rise of the Guardians (both of which made most of their domestic grosses in December 2012) each contributed to the month. Fall 2012 titles Taken 2, Cloud Atlas, Hotel Transylvania, Here Comes the Boom, and Pitch Perfect all contributed $10+ million each to the month. All told these $10+ million grossing fall 2012 holdovers contributed roughly $100 million to the entire month.

Compare this to November 2018. This is when A Star is Born, Halloween, and Venom were the only October 2018 holdovers to endure into November 2018. Worse, no fall 2017 holdovers contributed more than $17.1 million to November 2017. It’s not an annual occurrence that falls holdovers leg out to contribute mightily to November’s domestic box office haul. November 2012 benefited mightily from this phenomenon. Combining that with a diverse array of new movies and no wonder November 2012 thrived. It didn’t hurt that many November 2012 movies (Wreck-It Ralph, Rise of the Guardians, Life of Pi) were PG-rated titles families could check out. Such projects can benefit mightily from November holidays like Veteran’s Day and Thanksgiving as go-to excursions to get kids out of the house.

Let's return real quickly to November 2012's amount of newcomers. This month saw 13 new wide-release movies dropping into theaters. Seven of them either came from or were distributed by major studios. The other six hit the big screen thanks to independent labels like Lionsgate/Summit, The Weinstein Company, and FilmDistrict. In hindsight, even November 2012's glorious box office riches provided eerie early reminders of Hollywood studios not offering tons of new movies. After all, multiple major studio releases this month were technically from "independent" outfits. Skyfall was an MGM joint. Lincoln was a DreamWorks SKG title Disney distributed. Rise of the Guardians was the last DreamWorks Animation project Paramount distributed.

Though Skyfall and Lincoln were massive hits, they came from labels that were extremely cash-strapped. MGM and DreamWorks SKG, respectively, couldn’t be relied on to regularly deliver box office hits into the marketplace. Even this massive box office month had a precarious shadow cast over it. November 2012’s biggest hits practically blossomed almost as a fluke of luck given the tortured development process for both Skyfall and Lincoln. Even here, signs started flashing that fewer and fewer engines were driving the Hollywood locomotive. That problem would become more urgent in the years to come as indie labels like STX Entertainment and Open Road Films crumbled. 2020's corporate consolidation that wiped out studios like Warner Bros. and 20th Century Fox (which each previously produced 18-22 new theatrical movies annually) would only exacerbate this problem.

However, back in November 2012, there were only popped champagne bottles and confetti strewn around Hollywood (save for the DreamWorks Animation offices, recovering from Guardians being a rare box office flop for the studio). Not only were there hits galore, but they were successes that far exceeded people's expectations. Skyfall nearly doubled Quantum of Solace's domestic haul to become the biggest 007 movie ever in the market. It was also the first Bond feature to exceed $300 million domestically. Lincoln and Life of Pi blew everyone's expectations out of the water. Wreck-It Ralph proved Tangled was no fluke, Walt Disney Animation Studios was officially back in the business of producing box office hits. Flight, meanwhile, reaffirmed Denzel Washington's star power. Only he could take this grim original character study and propel it to $93.7 million domestically.

No wonder Thanksgiving 2012 was the biggest Thanksgiving weekend ever at the box office at the time. November 2012, meanwhile, still stands as the biggest November ever, though November 2013 would give a good college try at exceeding it the following year. In the years that followed, the November box office struggled to launch equally varied and lucrative slates. November 2015, for instance, suffered from a dead second weekend (there were no "dead" weekends in November 2012) that dragged down the month's box office haul. November 2019 had a massive hit Frozen II, but the month's first three weekends were rife with bombs.

Only November 2017 and 2018 have come close to matching that November 2012 magic again with their respective $1+ billion grosses. Hope is on the horizon for another glorious November box office. The incoming November 2024 trifecta of Wicked, Gladiator II, and Moana 2 should help this November the $523-627 million doldrums the last three November's have been grappling with. Theater owners and employees will undoubtedly be doing cartwheels over that news.

However, don't expect November 2024 to crack $1+ billion. The absolute dead slate of newcomers in November 2024's first three weekends will keep that from happening. Such empty weekends show Hollywood still hasn't learned the most important lessons from November 2012's box office highs. As long as a dearth of new and varied theatrical releases still plague movie theaters, November 2012’s record-shattering domestic box office haul is never getting toppled. Maybe that harsh reality is why everyone is choosing to focus on Gay Christmas for as long as possible…