Universal Pictures jump-started the holiday family movie season over the weekend with The Grinch, which earned a robust $66 million at the box office, proving audience goodwill for Dr. Seuss characters isn't going anywhere (despite that nobody has particularly fond memories of How the Grinch Stole Christmas, the 2000 live-action adaptation starring Jim Carrey).
Snarky, localized billboard ads helped drive families and young adults to theaters, and in the process pushed the domestic box office total over the $10 billion mark on Sunday — the earliest point in the year that total has been achieved. So once again, fears that the box office is on an overall downward trend appear to be unfounded, or at least overstated. The sky isn't falling yet, people.
The Grinch also represents success for computer animation house Illumination, the brains behind the Despicable Me and Minions films, not to mention Sing and The Secret Life of Pets. With this weekend’s release proving the animation studio’s umpteenth megahit in a row, Illumination, headed by Chris Meledandri, is challenging Disney’s Pixar in a way that DreamWorks never could.
Illumination has generally placed more emphasis on creating its own intellectual property than tapping into those that already exist (although they did release an adaptation of Dr. Seuss' The Lorax in 2012), and their success with The Grinch bodes well for the recently-announced Super Mario Bros. movie they are planning.
Although it seems a little early for a Christmas-themed family movie, the timing of The Grinch was probably wise — the next two weeks see the release of two massive family films: Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald hits next weekend and Disney's Ralph Breaks the Internet arrives the following week.
Despite ho-hum reviews, Fox's Bohemian Rhapsody is continuing to prove a crowd-pleaser (second-week returns brought its domestic box office total to $100 million). Although not exactly an artistic triumph, Rhapsody's boffo returns will no doubt get Hollywood excited for “sing-along” musical biopics.
These numbers are likely causing Paramount to rub their hands together in anticipation of their upcoming Elton John biopic, Rocketman (directed by Dexter Fletcher, the man brought in to help with Bohemian Rhapsody after Fox fired director Bryan Singer toward the end of production).
The J.J. Abrams-produced World War II horror/thriller Overlord earned a respectable $10 million in its opening frame despite no big stars or much audience awareness. That was enough to land the film in third place, a much better result than the weekend's other debuting live-action film, The Girl In the Spider's Web, which likely cost a lot more, and definitely had a bigger marketing budget.
The Lisbeth Salander films, based on books by the late Swedish author Stieg Larsson, were once a hot Hollywood property. Relative audience indifference to David Fincher's 2011 American adaptation of The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo slowed down the English-language side of the franchise, leading to the soft reboot starring Claire Foy from The Crown.
The new film's less-than-encouraging results probably mean it's the last of Salander we've seen for now, especially considering it opened below the second weekend of Disney's live-action Nutcracker movie (which earned $9.5 million for a total of $35 million so far) and the sixth week of Warner Bros.' A Star Is Born, which added another $8 million to bring its domestic total to $178 million.
Although the end-of-year family movie madness is just beginning, there's plenty of gas in the tank.