‘Mufasa’ Roars On New Year’s Day; ‘Nosferatu’ Already Record For Robert Eggers; ‘A Complete Unknown’ Searchlight’s Best Post Disney-Fox Merger – Box Office Update

New Year’s Day 2025 rang in an estimated $42.9M for all movies, the best result for the holiday post-Covid. New Year’s Day 2022 grossed $40.2M, led by Spider-Man: No Way Home ($23.1M).

January 1 did 33% more than the first day of 2024 — a great new beginning to a box office year that is expected to clear $9 billion. This New Year’s Day also was up 38% over New Year’s Eve’s business.

Another day, another day that Mufasa: The Lion King beat Sonic the Hedgehog 3 for No. 1, $10.3M to $8.95M. While the Paramount/Sega toon feature won the last two weekends, the Disney prequel has won six days at the daily box office since Christmas.

While Thanksgiving holdovers, Moana 2 and Wicked continue to play solid, respectively with $5.1M and $4.6M, the other big headlines this season is the resurgence of auteur-driven adult fare, read Focus Features’ Nosferatu and Searchlight’s Bob Dylan biopic, A Complete Unknown. Nosferatu at $53M and counting is easily director Robert Eggers‘ highest grossing movie at the domestic box office, flying past his 2022’s Viking epic The Northman ($34.2M). Yesterday, the Nicholas Hoult, Lily-Rose Depp, Bill Skarsgard, and Aaron-Taylor Johnson vampire movie sucked up $4.96M. The movie is easily cracking its way into Focus Features’ top movies of all-time.

Meanwhile, James Mangold’s A Complete Unknown stands at $31.7M and counting after a New Year’s Day take of $3.1M. By this weekend, the Timothee Chalamet title will become the highest grossing Searchlight movie post the 2019 Disney-Fox merger, surpassing the domestic take of 2022’s The Menu ($38.5M). What’s impressive about Nosferatu and A Complete Unknown is that they’re making massive momentum at the box office sans any juice from Oscar nominations. Nosferatu will pass the entire domestic take of Focus Features’ Oscar winner The Darkest Hour ($56.4M) by tomorrow, while A Complete Unknown will fly past the entire stateside cumes of Searchlight Oscar winners The Favourite ($34.3M), Poor Things ($34.5M) and Jojo Rabbit ($33.3M).

As we reported yesterday, the 2024 box office ended with $8.72 billion, -3% from 2023’s $9 billion tally.

There aren’t any new wide releases from either studio or arthouse labels. This coming weekend is one of three without wide entries in 2025 including October 31 and December 12.

New Year’s Day top 10 was as follows: