Box Office Report: Lion Around

Happy New Year! It’s 2025! A quarter of the century has passed! It’s almost too terrifying to think about. So, let’s talk about films instead.

January is notoriously known as a dump month for major theatrical releases. It’s seen as a dead season, post-Christmas but pre-Spring, where distributors put the movies they don’t expect to do all that well and hope for the best. We usually expect to see some horror titles, some middling action fare, and something starring Gerard Butler. This past weekend, things were pretty dead. Christmas is a big weekend for the movies. New Year’s Eve, not so much.

So, that meant good news for Mufasa: The Lion King. After a soft opening, it’s benefitted from the lack of competition and a strong festive week for family attendance. The film did enough business to leap over its biggest competition, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and take the top spot for the first time in its three-week domestic release. It earned $23.8 million from 3,925 cinemas, which brought its domestic gross to over $168.6 million. By comparison, Sonic the Hedgehog 3 made $21.2 million this past weekend but has over $187.5 million in the bank in North America. The latter is also a cheaper movie, but if Mufasa keeps going during this quiet month, then it might pay off for Disney. It seems on safer ground now than it did when it opened.

Nosferatu has also done good business, proving that sometimes there is a real hunger for counter-programming efforts. Its current total is $69.4 million after two weeks of release. Nice.

The biggest new release of the weekend was a thriller from 1995. A lot of cinemas seem to be doing David Fincher seasons this winter, my own multiplex included, and his classic and deeply disturbing work Seven made $915,000 from 200 locations. Not too shabby. I’m waiting for Zodiac.

Right behind that is the horror film The Damned, which earned $801,000 from 732 locations. This one wasn’t well advertised and didn’t benefit from the January slot. It’s a shame because this one was actually very well-reviewed.

If there is any action in January at the cinema, it’s with the awards season titles. By the time you read this, the Golden Globes will have happened, which could elevate the presence of many of these movies. For now, we’re still seeing some boosts as the ones with limited releases in 2024 start to increase their numbers in 2025. Nickel Boys earned $151,691 from only 18 locations while The Brutalist made $244,341 from eight places.

This coming week sees the wide release of the Robbie Williams chimp biopic Better Man and the thriller sequel Den of Thieves 2: Pantera. See, a Gerard Butler movie in January!

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.