Box Office Week: For the four-day weekend Star Wars: TLJ is a good #1 with $100.6M, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle is a great #2 with $52.1M, Pitch Perfect 3 is a weak #3 with $25M, The Greatest Showman a soft #4 with $14M, Downsizing flops at #7 with $7.2M, and Father Figures fails at #9 with $4.9M

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Star Wars: The Last Jedi	$100,669,000	$777,571,356	2
2	Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle	$52,150,000	$118,255,967	1
3	Pitch Perfect 3	$25,601,000	$35,401,000	1
4	The Greatest Showman	$14,000,000	$22,697,260	1
5	Ferdinand	$9,675,000	$59,820,076	2

*All numbers are for four-day weekend

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi - It's tough being #1, the expectations are just so damn high. Because objectively The Last Jedi is not doing as well as The Force Awakens much like everything else TLJ related the internet has broken entirely in half on whether TLJ is an outright failure box office wise or not. But before we really dig into all that, let's talk facts. This week The Last Jedi was #1 again for the four-day weekend, earning $100.6M. Notably for the three-day weekend TLJ earned $68.4M, which marked a massive 68.9% second weekend drop. (couldn't fit that in title so wanted to bold it cause it is big news) That's the worst second weekend drop ever for a Star Wars film and a massive downgrade from the 39.8% second weekend drop for TFA. Despite this the film is just $3M shy from passing $400M domestic and is currently the third highest grossing film of 2017 domestically in just 2 weeks. Internationally the film continues to dominate, passing $750M worldwide already. I think I'll get this out of the way now, The Last Jedi is a success. I'm sorry that is just not up for debate. The film is rocketing towards $1B and should in the next week or two manage to pass Beauty and the Beast as the highest grossing film domestically of 2017. That would make the #1 highest grossing film of the last three years Star Wars films. It should also easily pass $600M domestic. This film is an unqualified success, simple as that. However when you are a brand as big as Star Wars just being #1 isn't everything, it's how you do it. So let's talk about that drop.

• Star Wars: The Last Jedi (cont.) - As noted that marks the worst drop-off ever for a Star Wars film. It's easy enough to look at that number and say "fan backlash" and move on but there's a lot going on in these numbers. For one, there was always going to be some downgrade from TFA, which had the most hype perhaps any film could ever have. It was the first true sequel to one of the most popular franchises of all time after 30 years of waiting. TLJ also notably does not have a certain major A-list star that TFA had and is now the third Star Wars film in three years. However that should only mark a downturn in overall gross, not drops which is more significant. The better excuse there is bad timing. While TLJ came out the same weekend as TFA, that weekend in 2017 is 3 days earlier than it was in 2015 for TFA so a lot less schools were out during TLJ's run. Not to mention that TLJ's Sunday landed on Christmas Eve, usually one of the worst movie-going days of the season due to theaters closing early. TLJ recovered pretty well on Christmas Day too. While its $32.1M Christmas Day gross is far below TFA's $49.3M it's still the second best Christmas Day of all time and fairly above Rogue One's $25M Christmas Day gross. Still that drop is rough and the daily holds for TFA have also been exceptionally low. It will be interesting to see what will happen daily now that TLJ is finally in that Christmas holiday sweet spot but there is cause for concern here. While again this film is a huge success the power and longevity of a brand are very important. Disney has put a lot of faith into the idea that Star Wars will be a yearly powerhouse and any sign of weakness is concerning. Remember Batman v Superman was (mostly) a success but had terrible drops. Two years later and Justice League is the laughing stock of the franchise year. This all could easily catch up to Disney by Episode IX, especially if they don't manage to win fans back in that time. Not to mention next year has Solo, which is looking more and more worrisome with various unsourced reports saying Disney is just expecting it to bomb at this point. Longevity and stability are important to a franchise and while TLJ is doing well it is doing it in the shakiest and least stable way possible.

• Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - It's interesting how in the modern internet, social media driven culture how quickly it feels we can declare someone's career over. Coming in to Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle (which was #2 for the four-day weekend with $52.1M), the internet felt so insulted that their 90s nostalgia would A) be so different and B) star Dwayne Johnson, Jack Black, and Kevin Hart who everyone had decided were over. Johnson first got shade for his minor flop Baywatch (which did poorly domestically but okay overseas) and the news that his spin-off movie with Jason Statham is delaying Fast and Furious 9. Then there's Hart who released his third and worst performing theatrical special What Now? to mediocre box office and hype. And then there's Black who's career has been a bevy of ups and down, but mostly has just been absent from cinema recently outside of the voice acting roles. Yet despite all this the film managed a very impressive early run, opening on Wednesday and managing to make $68.7M for the first six days of release. Sony, who's had a rough year and a lot of bad association to their brand name in general, made an interesting and wise move to screen the film early to Amazon Prime customers, earning $1.8M in previews. This plus some solid reviews (better reviews than the original Jumanji at least) and the film felt a lot less like damage control than a legitimate power player in the Christmas season. With an A- on Cinemascore at this current rate the film is likely going to pass $200M domestic, solidifying that the three leads are still comedy powerhouses. The simple truth is this was a great investment. The took a nostalgic property and rebranded with modern A-listers and sold it at a time when families needed a comedy they can all agree on. I know it's insane to say but Sony actually made a good business decision in 2017.

• Pitch Perfect 3 - It's always interesting when a movie series can become the new model for how to squeeze an unnecessary franchise til it's totally dead, and Pitch Perfect you are my new model as Pitch Perfect 3 opened to a very soft #3 with $25M. As you may remember the first Pitch Perfect was a huge surprise minor hit, opening to $14.5M and closing to $65M as well as spawning a #1 hit single in the US. In this case a sequel was inevitable and the result was massive. Pitch Perfect 2 opened to $69M, only the second film in history to make more on its opening weekend than the first film's entire domestic run (the other is Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me). In Hollywood terms this is of course a goldmine, time to run this franchise down to the bone. Except this isn't a franchise, this is a sequel to a surprise hit that was based on a book and cost $19M and was hoping at best to make $40M. But like classic sequel culture the third and reported final film was made. Now the budget has ballooned to $45M, we have our unnecessary action sequences, and the film is somehow 20 minutes shorter than the other two. Not to mention the reviews for each film keep falling with PP 3 getting some really bad critical attention. And the result is...expected. It's notable PP 2 opened in May like a goddamn blockbuster and PP3 came out in December hoping to at least get good legs with its release. The $25M four-day is really weak and with such a stacked December it doesn't seem like there's room enough for Pitch Perfect anymore. This is a good example of Hollywood milking a franchise dry, propping up something they don't understand then throwing it to the wolves when it falters.

• The Greatest Showman - The bizarre Hugh Jackman circus musical opened this week to a terrible if somewhat expected $14M at #4. The odd film from Fox has been this bizarre huge budget ($84M) question mark for months, as it was only really know as a musical late in the game, being sold early on as an Oscar contender for Jackman's portrayal of real-life circus magnate P.T. Barnum. However once the songs hit, the film suddenly had more of a social justice vibe, especially with the song "This is Me" a song sung by the "circus freaks" about being empowered by differences. While critics found the songs decent and the production values solid for Showman, they all noted the weird irony of making this empowering musical about Barnum of all people, a notoriously controversial figure who notably used differently abled people as "freaks" in his show and was incredibly cruel to animals and staff alike. The film just also had no marketing, hoping young people would A) enjoy the happy songs on YouTube and B) not click any extra links on the Wikipedia page. Actually those who did see the film seemed to like it as it scored an A on Cinemascore, the best CS of the week. But with such a rough opening I don't see Showman sticking around much longer. This was just a very weird movie that clearly Fox had no idea what to do with. So instead they left it to the dregs of film twitter and maybe hoped one of the songs would get a social media boost. It didn't quite work out that way. What did Barnum say about suckers?

• Downsizing - It's been a bad year for Matt Damon, a bad year for Paramount, and a really bad year for Paramount movies starring Matt Damon. As if the financial failures for mother! and Suburbicon weren't enough, now comes Downsizing which opened terribly at #7 with $7.2M for the four-day weekend. The film is the latest from Alexander Payne and his first foray into $50M+ filmmaking as Downsizing cost a hefty $68M. Downsizing has been facing a pretty rough uphill battle for a while. First off, the film had a fascinating festival run, starting from mild praise and each festival getting worse and worse reviews before being declared rotten on RottenTomatoes before opening this weekend. If that wasn't enough the film also decided to have very misleading marketing, portraying the film as a straight comedy when in actuality it becomes more of a social issue movie by the end. Because of that the film scored a pretty terrible C rating on Cinemascore, so don't expect this one to stick around for a while. It's not exactly the way Paramount probably wanted the year to end, with a 5% share on 17 theatrical releases (in comparison Disney has a 20% share this year with 12 releases). It's been a rough year for them, especially when going into it felt like films like Downsizing and mother! were the risky, weird projects studios just don't fund any more. And after this year, it's likely Paramount will also be getting out of the auteur game all together.

• Father Figures - I...really have almost nothing to say here. This is a film full of outdated comedians (seriously is Ed Helms' career the poster child for white privilege?) and bizarre stunt casting. It got some of the worst reviews of the year. It was barely marketed and dumped as the fifth option on a week with goddamn Star Wars out. I mean is this some experiment? Some practical joke? Well as expected it opened terribly to #9 with $4.9M. Guess it's a fitting way for WB to end their weird up and down year, with a bizarre comedy with the worst poster of 2017.

• Oscar Movie Round-up - Christmas weekend saw some expansions for the Oscar race which is still so up in the air no film is really getting that "you have to see this one in particular" bump. The best earning of the bunch is Darkest Hour, which is still the favorite to win Best Actor and expanded this week to 800 theaters. This weekend it grossed $5.4M at #8, a per theater average of $6,700. That's a great hold for the film which was showing signs of weakness on its expansion but this could mean a solid box office run for the film which will definitely help in the still very up-in-the-air Best Actor race. Next up is The Shape of Water which added 500 theaters and managed to crack the top ten with $4.3M for the four-day weekend. While its per theater average of $5,890 isn't bad, it's not quite as strong as Fox Searchlight was hoping for and may show signs of the film cooling some. Meanwhile Call Me by Your Name is finally being expanded outwards past the coasts as it expanded to over 100 theaters this week and earned $1M with a per theater average $9,141, which is good but maybe a little low for this point. With the film not entering wide release until January there is concern it just waited too damn long in limited to matter. Meanwhile one of the last major contenders for Best Picture has finally opened as The Post opened in nine theaters to $526K, a per theater average of $58,446 (though its three day PTA was $92,222, one of the best of the year). The film directed by Steven Spielberg is considered a late spoiler as its story of journalistic ethics during the Nixon era is the only film of the race to be made during the Trump administration and that political firebrand element plus longtime Oscar favs Tom Hanks and Meryl Streep could lead to same major upsets at the Oscars. Finally I, Tonya, the biopic about Tonya Harding, expanded this week to 37 theaters and made $445K with a per theater average of $12,046. The film seems to be expanding well and could give a boost to Margot Robbie and Alison Janey in their Oscar races.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Blade Runner 2049	$91,524,557	$258,245,550	$150M	11
Thor: Ragnarok	$309,444,758	$844,871,186	$180M	8
Justice League	$223,173,455	$647,173,455	$300M	6

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross	Worldwide Gross	Budget
Despicable Me 3	$264,624,300	$1,033,508,147	$80M
Jigsaw	$38,052,832	$102,055,501	$10M
The Foreigner	$34,393,507	$140,393,507	$35M
The Battle of the Sexes	$12,638,526	$17,826,663	$25M

As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice.

Submitted December 26, 2017 at 11:02PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2BGiSMl