There’s not much going on at the weekend box office. Yes, point fingers at the dual strikes’ impact on the theatrical schedule. But it’s also January, which typically counts a couple of the year’s lowest-grossing weekends. The 3-day for all titles is looking at $68M, which is not only the first weak weekend of the New Year, but 8% off the same frame a year ago, which did $72.4M. Per Box Office Mojo, the first two weekends of January grossed $85.7M and $97M, respectively.
While Sundance — with the celebration of indie cinema and discovery of new filmmakers — rages on in Park City, UT, there’s never really been any correlation between what’s going on in Park City and what’s playing on national marquees, though pre-Covid, we’ve seen films perform significantly better in late January. Last year at this time, Avatar: The Way of Water, led the chart in its 6th weekend with $20.1M — again, something we don’t really have this year: a strong holiday tentpole carryover from the previous year. Sony’s Searching was the line wide studio release teeing off with $9.1M.
This year, it’s Paramount’s second weekend of Mean Girls at 3,826 theaters with $11.7M, -59% decline, for what will be a ten-day of $50M. Through ten days, new Mean Girls is pacing 19% ahead of 2004’s Mean Girls, which finaled at $86M. Why the drop? Was it because audiences weren’t informed in the marketing that it was a musical? No, Mean Girls fans are fully aware of that. Two reasons:- it’s a young female skewing movie (46% under 25) and those are typically front-loaded, plus that B CinemaScore. Mean Girls fans’ have high standards in the second go-round. Nonetheless, this January is all about Mean Girls.
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