Weekend projections: Wonka singing up impressive $39 million on debut

December 17, 2023

Wonka

Wonka is kicking the holiday season off with a bang as it heads to an opening weekend around $39 million, according to Warner Bros.’ Sunday-morning projection. While not quite the best weekend for a live-action musical (a record still held by High School Musical 3: Senior Year), it is easily the best for a musical not based on an existing show, bettering the $15.5 million earned by The Greatest Showman over its second weekend in December, 2017.

Here’s how the domestic numbers look as of Sunday morning (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



Wonka’s performance is doubly encouraging given the long legs enjoyed by musicals. The Greatest Showman is an extreme example, as it went to earn $174.3 million after opening with $8.8 million. Our measurement of its legs, calculated by dividing its final box office total by its biggest weekend, is 11.23. Other musicals that opened in December have legs ranging from Into the Woods’ 4.12, to Mary Poppins Returns’ 6.06, to La La Land’s 10.40. All of those numbers are good (the average for a wide release has been between 3 and 3.5 since 2003), and a multiplier of 6 for Wonka would take it well past $200 million at the domestic box office and into the top 10 for the year.

Click the chart below for our full set of comparisons between Holiday-Season musicals:

Wonka is also doing excellent business internationally. It’ll pass $100 million this weekend after two weekends in release, with $53.6 million taking it to $112.4 million outside North America. Its top markets so far are the United Kingdom, with $23.2 million, Mexico ($11.2m), Germany ($6.8m), Spain ($6.4m), Japan ($6.3m), China ($5.5m), France ($5.1m), Brazil ($4.8m), and Australia ($4.0m).

Wonka’s strong opening may have dulled business for the other films at the top of the chart, with the second- to sixth-placed entries all coming in behind our pre-weekend predictions. Christmas with the Chosen: Holy Night is coming in a little ahead, but broadly in line, with expectations. Poor Things is doing notably well on its first weekend of expansions. It’ll be one to watch as Awards Season really takes off after the holidays.

Overall, we’re looking at a good weekend by recent standards, courtesy mostly of Wonka. Compared to last year, however, when Avatar: The Way of Water debuted with $134.1 million, things don’t look so good. It still looks like we’ll have a weak end to 2023, and not much coming up in the first couple of months of 2024 to improve the picture. If Wonka does have the kind of legs musicals are known for, it could be in the top 10 for quite a while.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

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