“Moana” Beats the Shenanigans of “Office Christmas Party”

By Kip Mooney • On • In News, Weekend Box Office Report News, Weekend Box Office Report 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT

December 9-11, 2016

(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

 

TOP 5

Moana $18.8 million
Office Christmas Party  $17.5 million
Fantastic Beasts
and Where to Find Them 		 $10.7 million
Arrival $5.6 million
Doctor Strange $4.6 million

 

Despite an aggressively marketed new comedy – the first big one since Boo! A Madea Halloween – Moana remained No. 1 for a third weekend in a row. Though the family-friendly animated film has held strong, it still has yet to cross $200 million, putting it well behind other animated films this year, even other offerings from Disney.

Office Christmas Party – the third Christmas comedy of the season, after Almost Christmas and Bad Santa 2 – has already done the best of the trio, opening with an estimated $17.5 million. Still, it's proving part of 2016's troubling trend of studio comedies underperforming. Bad Moms and Central Intelligence were the only real breakouts, and this one seems unlikely to top $100 million, especially given the onslaught of competition it will face in the next few weeks.

Fantastic Beasts is now just shy of $200 million, meaning it's likely to finish as the lowest-grossing Harry Potter flick, and sure to send Warner Brothers to re-thinking if they should really be making four more of these. Arrival continues to be the word-of-mouth hit of the fall, while Doctor Strange is finishing up its solid run.

 

Outside the top 5:

  • This Weekend's Indie Champ: As predicted, La La Land had the biggest per-screen average of the year, and nearly of all time. With an astonishing $171,000 on each of its five screens, that's just below The Grand Budapest Hotel, which smashed records in 2014 with more than $200,000 on its four screens. This sets it up to be one of the biggest Oscar contenders of the winter.
  • Miss Sloane certainly didn't set the world on fire in its expansion. Playing on 1,648 screens, the gun-control lobbying drama only took in $1.9 million.
  • If nothing much has excited you this fall, three smaller films are worth your attention that haven't hit any big milestones yet: Manchester by the Sea (No. 8), The Edge of Seventeen (No. 17) and Moonlight (No. 18) are all worth your dollars.

 

Next week: Rogue One will eclipse the competition like the Death Star. The only question is how high its debut will be. I don't think $250 million is possible, since it doesn't have the years-long anticipation like we all had for The Force Awakens. So I think $175 million is a safe bet. Collateral Beauty is the only other competition and despite Will Smith's star power, it won't even make $20 million.

 

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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