The rituals of awards season are ideal for surrounding hits with glitz, but some big-budget movies with mixed reviews can get lost in the smoke and mirrors. Consider the case of three of history’s priciest creature features — Dolittle, Underwater and Cats — all opening quietly amidst Oscar distractions, and leaving potential write-offs surpassing $100
Cats
EXCLUSIVE: No amount of star power from Taylor Swift, James Corden, Idris Elba, Jason Derulo, etc. nor the direction of Oscar winner Tom Hooper could save Cats at the global box office. Our finance sources informed over this weekend that the Universal/Amblin/Working Title feature adaptation of the near $4 billion-grossing Andrew Lloyd Webber stage musical is
Refresh for latest…: Disney/Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker has climbed to $724.8M globally after 12 days in release. The split is $363M from the international box office and $361.8M domestic. This is after a $94.3M offshore weekend, which is above projections and reps just a 43% drop from the debut frame in 52
Another big day for Disney’s Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker with a Dec. 26 estimated gross of $30.7M, -4% from Christmas Day. Industry sources are forecasting that through the ninth-quel’s first ten days by Sunday, the J.J. Abrams directed movie will hit $380.9M, pacing 3% ahead of Last Jedi at the same point in time. Pretty impressive for
Christmas Eve Update: Disney’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker took in $29.3M on Monday, -27% from Sunday for a 4-day + previews total of $206.7M. The film will remain undefeated with a second weekend in the $70M-$80M range, and the wide entries opening on Christmas Day won’t siphon off any grosses including Sony/Regency’s Little Women ($18M-$22M
The atrocious response from audiences and critics toward the feature adaptation of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats has no doubt upset execs at Universal and Working Title this weekend. The movie wound up opening below its $10M-$15M projections to $6.5M, and while you can’t expect much business-wise from adult-skewing movies outside of Star Wars before Christmas Day, the audience
EXCLUSIVE: The dark force from critics isn’t keeping Disney’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker down with the Lucasfilm finale to the George Lucas-created saga seeing between $44M-$48M per Deadline sources tonight. At that level, Rise of Skywalker will wind up being either the third or fourth best preview night ever with the current top three being last
Disney will ring out its $10 billion-plus global 2019 with Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, in what is expected to be a $450M global opening, which is what Star Wars: The Last Jedi opened to in 2017, behind Force Awakens’ near $528.9M. Skywalker rises in France, Germany and Italy tomorrow with previews in China with domestic previews starting Thursday
The last wide entries of 2019 hit tracking today with projections for the 5-day Christmas holiday as follows: 20th Century Fox/Blue Sky’s animated feature Spies in Disguise ($23M-$30M), Sony’s Greta Gerwig directed Little Women ($19M-$35M), and A24’s Adam Sandler crime thriller Uncut Gems ($15M). Distribution sources always say that people don’t begin to go to