Red One spreads a moderate amount of cheer over its weirdly complicated opening weekend

With just one more week to go until the highly-anticipated Wicked-Gladiator II showdown, a new Christmas movie tentpole entered the marketplace to help bolster theaters. Red One opened in 4,032 theaters and delivered numbers that were more okay than Holly Jolly. Over its opening weekend, Red One grossed only $34 million. That’s not really great for a $250 million budgeted movie, even one that was supposed to go to streaming originally. , narrowly edging out another family-friendly original live-action movie, IF.

What’s weird, though, is Red One did perform about as well as one would expect for a Christmas-themed tentpole and a kid-skewing Dwayne Johnson movie. On The-Numbers, Red One had the fourth-best recorded domestic opening weekend for a Christmas-themed movie. As for Johnson, this opening was in the same range as Rampage, Central Intelligence, and Jungle Cruise's domestic bow. It even opened only 6% worse than Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, though that 2017 comedy title burnt off some pre-weekend demand with a Wednesday launch. Save for Jungle Cruise, though, all those previous Johnson movies cost way less than Red One. Oh, and Red One blew past Knives Out to secure Chris Evans.

Christmas movies are leggy creations. This Jake Kasdan directorial effort has an A- CinemaScore and terrific day-to-day legs (discounting its preview grosses, Red One went up roughly 88% from Friday to Saturday) at its back. It’s likely Red One, even with intense Thanksgiving competition, will get past $100 million domestically. If it does that, it’ll be only the 15th movie distributed in North America. What a weird film this is in box office performance. Red One is a paradox. It’s going to lose gobs of money, especially since its overseas box office prospects are nil. Also, it did reaffirm that Johnson is a steady draw for families even after some clunker movies like Black Adam. Like last weekend’s Christmas Pageant movie, it’s also a very promising sign that audiences will show up for Yuletide-themed films theatrically post-March 2020.

Amazon MGM Studios brass, meanwhile, are probably genuinely delighted to see that its marketing arm can get a non-sequel movie to $34 million as the studio gets ready to release forthcoming theatrical blockbusters like Voltron, Masters of the Universe, and Bond 27. Amazon bought MGM in March 2022. Red One at least shows that this new distributor can top the box office and deliver numbers harkening back to major studio openings. Somehow, Red One will be one of the bigger money losers of the year and an interesting sign that Amazon MGM Studios is getting a solid box office track record together (following other 2024 hits The Beekeeper and Challengers). Man, imagine how much better Red One would’ve done if it wasn’t one of the worst movies of the year! Or at least didn’t have a costlier price tag than the first Avatar.

With a new PG-13 action blockbuster entering the marketplace, Venom: The Last Dance had a 53% drop this frame. That gave this Kelly Marcel directorial effort a fourth-weekend haul of $7.3 million. This one increased a whopping 127% from Friday to Saturday this weekend, an indication The Last Dance is playing more like a family-friendly movie than even other superhero films. The Last Dance has now gobbled up $127.6 million domestically after 24 days of release. Next was The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which dropped 50% to gross another $5.4 million. That's a way steeper decline than usual for one of these family-friendly Yuletide movies. However, the film's $10.8 million opening weekend including $2.8 million from preview grosses. Remove those and this $10 million budgeted feature dropped a more reasonable 33% this frame. After ten days, Christmas Pageant has grossed $19.95 million.

In its second weekend, Heretic fell 52% to gross another $5.16 million for a 10-day total of $20.4 million. This is now only the 15th A24 movie ever to crack $20 million domestically. Depending on how it holds over Thanksgiving, Heretic could make just under or over $35 million domestically. Not too shabby. The Wild Robot had a slightly bigger weekend-to-weekend drop this frame compared to its last five weekends. That still meant, however, it only dipped 35%. Grossing another $4.3 million, Robot has now grossed $137.7 million domestically. Can it get to $150 million? Probably not because of Wicked and Moana 2, but still, what an incredible theatrical run this one had.

Next up among holdovers was Smile 2, with $2.95 million. That 42% decline from the previous frame brings this one $65.6 million domestically. Easing another 31%, Conclave grossed an additional $2.85 million this frame. Conclave has now grossed $26.5 million over just 24 days of domestic release and it's certainly not finished yet. Before this weekend, tiny indie distributor Abramorama Films had only scored two movies that cleared $1 million domestically. Its biggest movie in North America was 2016's The Beatles: Eight Days a Week with $2.9 million. Well, this small label scored a massive hit this weekend with Hello, Love, Again, which grossed an incredible $2.4 million from just 248 locations. This hit from the Philippines scored a sizeable opening weekend that blew away all other lifetime North American grosses for Philippines cinema.

Note to bigger indie studios like Focus Features and Sony Pictures Classics: try theatrically launching these kinds of crowd-pleaser titles from all over the world. These studios typically ignore foreign language films period. However, there’s clearly an audience (always has been!) for such titles theatrically! Abramorama is reaping the benefits. Y’all should too.

Expanding into 1,185 locations this weekend, A Real Pain grossed $2.3 million for a per-theater average of $1,941. If this can hold onto its screens over the Thanksgiving week, it should have a nice leggy run in theaters. A Real Pain has now grossed $3 million domestically. In its second weekend of wide release, Anora eased just 27% and grossed another $1.83 million. It amassed that haul from 1,500 theaters for a $1,226 per theater average.

Anora is now the first Sean Baker movie ever to crack $10+ million domestically, only the second 2024 limited release (following We Live in Time) to exceed $10+ million in North America and just the seventh Neon movie ever to crack the eight-digit mark in this territory. The parallels between Anora and Parasite also continued this frame. Anora had a significantly smaller fifth-weekend haul than Parasite... but the film's second wide-release weekends were identical (though Parasite was playing in far fewer theaters). Anora is running just 7% behind Parasite at the same point.

We Live in Time can't stop won't stop as it eased 47% to gross another $1.13 million in its fifth weekend of wide release. It's now amassed a terrific $23.9 million domestically. Here fell 64% in its thid weekend of release, grossing just $865,000 for an $11.6 million domestic total. Ghost Cat Anzu opened to only $158,229 from 328 locations for a $428 per-theater average. Also worthing noting that The Substance, in its ninth weekend of release, grossed another $136,850 for a $16.312 million domestic total. This title really did beat the odds to become a little moneymaker.

All We Imagine is Light began its domestic theatrical run this weekend and grossed a solid $51,000 from three locations for a $17,000 per-theater average. That's a better opening weekend per-theater average than fellow November Janus Films release EO from two years ago ($12,000). The Outrun returned to 167 theaters this weekend and grossed a dismal $27,412. Its domestic total now stands at $940,486. Sony Pictures Classics is really trying to get this one past $1 million.

This was yet another pitiful weekend at the domestic box office, with the top ten amassing just $66 million. Starting with Bad Boys: Ride or Die in June 2024's first frame, the domestic box office went through a four-month hot streak where titles of all shapes and sizes soared at the box office. The Wild Robot's excellent opening weekend was the final hoorah for that trend. Joker: Folie a Deux at the start of October 2024 kicked off a now seven-week-long streak of box office doldrums. Let's be honest here: the reasoning behind that cold streak isn't rocket science. A minimal slate of major new wide releases heavily reliant on just "sequels! sequels! sequels!", not to mention subpar movies like Joker, Smile 2, and Red One, have kept audiences away from theaters.

The last seven weeks have seen moneymakers like Terrifier 3 and indie hits such as Conclave and Anora. However, the domestic box office top ten hasn’t cracked $100+ million in nearly two months for a reason. The slate of new releases has been shoddy and reliant on giving people what they’ve already had rather than taking chances on something new. But! Hope is immediately on the horizon thanks to Wicked, Gladiator II, and Moana 2. Best of all, there’ll be plenty of fresh new releases in December to follow that trio up. Rather than the marketplace being desolate after Thanksgiving, December will see titles like Sonic the Hedgehog 3, Mufasa: The Lion King, Nosferatu, and others drop into theaters.

Oh, and there’ll also be around six or even new wide releases over December 2024’s first weekend alone. The holiday season is about to kick into high gear and hopes are high that these final six weekends of 2024 can get the year’s domestic box office back on track. It’s all about the movies in theaters. People love going to see stuff on the big screen. You just have to give them a reason to leave their homes rather than bombard them with ads for rehashes of old Joker and Dwayne Johnson movies. Fingers crossed, solely for the sake of theater owners and employees (who cares about mega-conglomerates like Disney or Comcast), that the box office bonanza Bad Boys: Ride or Die and The Wild Robot bookended comes roaring back with a passion next weekend.