For romantic comedies, here are $50M+ movies over the past 12 years:

1 Crazy Rich Asians $174,532,921 2018
2 Silver Linings Playbook $132,092,958 2012
3 Trainwreck $110,212,700 2015
4 Think Like a Man $91,547,205 2012
5 What Men Want $54,611,903 2019
6 Overboard $50,316,123 2018

That's it! ABY already will make #5 and will be behind only Crazy Rich Asians for the past 8 years. However, it is a strange list because Ticket To Paradise isn't on here for instance so it's up for interpretation how Mojo selects genres. It's listed under "Comedy Romance." What's the difference between Romantic Comedy and Comedy Romance?

Source: https://www.boxofficemojo.com/genre/sg2111762689/

Some of those are surprising. The Faris Overboard did 50m? Think like a Man 90 in 2012 dollars?

Steve Harvey has some pretty immense pull. The movie sort of based on the book that sold 2.8M+ copies. $12M budget.

I'm pretty sure if he wanted to be a Tyler Perry / Oprah Presents force at the box office he could be. That book came out 12 years ago and he's only gotten more popular since with Family Feud and his Talk Show.

I just think it had a rush out factor. Probably from fans of the book, stage show, and/or previous movie.

It’s like a Twilight level rush factor

I would include Ticket to Paradise.

Amazing how few romcoms there have been over the last decade. Hopefully we see a resurgence and hope that applies for comedy in general.

I tend to think the success of the MCU satiated the comedy, fantasy, sci-fi and adventure itch all in one. But with less reliance on the MCU - hopefully other genres start to thrive again.

I thought Wonka would be the biggest story of December 2023. Then looking at Color Purple crazy presales for its OD and strong reviews it got, I thought it will pull a rabbit out of its hat. In the end a middling romcom is going to be the story of the month despite Wonka finishing as the biggest movie of Q4 2023.

Thursday #'s starting to come in

Wonka $2,700,000 -66% $150,221,147
Anyone But You $2,010,000 -28% $34,220,000
Aquaman $1,900,000 -67% $89,410,753
Night Swim $1,450,000 NEW
The Color Purple $820,000 -75% $49,855,028 11
The Boy and The Heron $364,000 $37,890,000

Wonka passes $150M in 21 days! Jumanji was at $6,021,914 on the equivalent day in 2017.

Aquaman will pass $90M today (Day 15). It's holding decently and could be much much worse.

Speaking of worse legs, Color Purple will pass $50M today, 10 days after opening to $18M.

Here are the top Christmas Day openers ($2.5M+) with more than 15% of their total made Christmas Day (removed Ferrari and BITB which are still in release and may go below 15%)

The Color Purple $18,151,050 37% $49,035,028 -> % could reach 25.9% with $70M total
Ali $10,216,625 17.6% $58,203,105 Dec 25, 2001
Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem $9,515,615 22.8% $41,797,066
Wonder Woman 1984 $7,482,427 16% $46,801,036
47 Ronin $7,031,735 18.3% $38,362,475
Holmes & Watson $6,434,922 21% $30,573,626
American Underdog $4,188,895 15.8% $26,514,814
The Spirit $3,842,223 19.4% $19,806,188
Black Christmas $3,307,602 20.3% $16,273,581
Wolf Creek $2,805,754 17.3% $16,188,180

Ali adjusted for inflation is at $20.03M opening day / $96.12M so Color Purple's opening day isn't that far off but it fell off a cliff faster.

If wonka acts like jumanji (seems best case scenario) wonka finishes at 235 million, I see it going well below that, probably closer to 220. Aquaman might get to 130 with the dead marketplace.

With Aquaman and eventually Trolls and Migration, 2023 will have 25 100 million films, 2022 had 17, 2021 had 13, definitely had a shot at 2019’s 29. Marvels, equalizer, dungeons and Dragons, even Nun 2 and meg2., Shazam, blue beetle, total misfires, but at the same time a lot of surprises like Sound of Freedom, Scream, Taylor, five nights kind of even it out.

Updated total approximates based on this week's dailies:

1 Wonka $240M (-$5M)
2 Hunger Games $168M (-$2M)
3 Migration $160M (+$5M)
4 Aquaman $132M (+$7M)
5 Trolls $104M (-$3M)
6 Anyone But You $85M (+$17M)
7 The Color Purple $70M (-$10M)
8 Wish $65M (-$1M)
9 Napoleon $63M
10 The Boys in the Boat $63M
11 Godzilla $59M
12 The Boy and the Heron $46M (-$1M)
13 The Iron Claw $34M
14 Poor Things $32M
15 Ferrari $23M (-$1M)

I don't think it has bad WOM, just fairly limited wide appeal.

These civil rights movies like Till and Rustin (did poorly on streaming I believe) are not very popular, maybe cause they seem phony and the inspirational or evil racist bad guy beats would be very predictable. The Color Purple is just the musical version of it with more recognizable but somewhat dated name recognition.

Anyone But You now above Aquaman...

I really hope this isn't one of those cases of ABY doing better over weekdays, or just lots of folks still on holiday this week and it plays meh on the weekend. Let's see a weekend increase!!

It was never a classic.

I don't see how it's going to make another $100m from here. I think you're modelling it on a much more successful film, but Migration isn't Puss or Sing. I know there aren't kids fare for a while but Migration isn't having the reception of a Puss or a Sing. Can it really leg it out after only making $65m through the most prosperous period?

it's crazy how they missed out on making the crazy rich asians sequel shortly after, it would definitely have decreased in gross but still would've turned a tidy profit

Let me give the caveat that my "modeling" has a high chance for margin of error. Lots of guess work in there too.

Mostly giving it some credit as the main big family film aside from re-releases, MLK weekend which will give it a bump, Feb. long weekend, families will need something. Even if it is less acclaimed than Puss, it's dailies were surpassing it over the holidays.

Trolls/Wish are on their last legs so it's probably got a premium just for being the only thing in town and this and next month are among the least exciting film fare box office wise that I can recall seeing. Two Pixar re-releases from 3 years ago to fill in the gap from the strike, it feels like Migration is going to be the catch all for families.

I do think all these films will benefit from the last two weekends of January being turds.

The original adjusts to 250m+, this one follows the plot beat for beat. You'd think it wouldn't be any less accessible.

Times are very different and there were bigger macro trends.

The Color Purple came out in 1985 when:
-Roots miniseries aired in 1977 8 years earlier to reach viewership of 100M people over 8 episodes.
-Eddie Murphy joined SNL in 1980 and stayed until 1984 to become their biggest star ever.
-Color Purple book released in 1982, which has now sold 5M+ copies and won the Pulitzer in 1983.
-Thriller had come out 3 year earlier becoming the biggest album of all time.
-Quincy Jones involvement as a producer who also produced Thriller.
-Michael Jackson, Quincy, Spielberg saw Whoopi Goldberg's standup so she was gaining fans.
-The Cosby Show was #1 show on TV (1985 - 1990 stayed at #1).
-Stephen Spielberg's second movie post Raiders (1981), and ET (1982) following IJ2 (1984).
-1 year later, Oprah started her show in 1986.
-$15M budget vs $100M of new version
-11 Oscar nods so could keep the run going for a while. It was released wide Feb. 1986.
-Stayed in theaters for 21 weeks (almost half a year).
-There were boycotts of the film so it likely got amplified attention for groundbreaking at the time.

All in all, just felt that the first film became a zeitgeist pop culture moment that pulled in all moviegoers. Was lightning in a bottle to make a mega box office smash. It became an event movie and Spielberg's name just 3 years after ET would be like if Nolan made this new version X 10.

That was my thinking for PAW Patrol's Mighty Movie and look how that turned out!

Tell that to Taylor. I mean I’ve only heard great things about the musical and the movie (and I’m a musical nut) I can’t say I have any desire for it. So maybe it just hit some really crazy niche and people looked at it like a one night event to see with the family.

It’s just so bizarre that it would appeal to so many people day 1 and then like no one after.

Like isn’t it gonna have worse legs than Aquaman who would’ve predicted that?

I think the most generous interpretation of The Color purple's run is that it is attracting the same audience as The Woman king but with its entire opening weekend happening on christmas day rather than over 3 days, hence the $18m OD -> $65m total run. Anecdotally, it seems like Oprah really pushed the "see it on Dec 25th" angle hard during the marketing campaign which might have led some people to assume that it would only be available then. And there are also some reports of black churches buying entire screenings for that day and that day alone.

But ultimately, there has to be at least some bad WOM involved, which is not being captured by traditional polling firms. I think the fact that the movie is a musical might be playing badly with the (predominantly) black audience. And the controversy with its depiction of black men might also matter more than it did in 1985.