'Aquaman' Heading For $200M+; 'Mary Poppins Returns' Flying To $100M+
Warner Bros. is calling the pre-New Year's weekend of Aquaman at $51.5M, -24%, for a 10-day running of $188.8M that's 10% ahead of Justice League at the same point in time (which ended its run at $229M), 24% ahead of the ten-day cume of Doctor Strange (final B.O. $232.6M) and 7% ahead of Guardians of the Galaxy (final B.O. $333.1M). The DC superhero is expected to hit $200M by EOD tomorrow, and $210M by New Year's Day at the domestic B.O. Unlike Christmas Eve, New Year's Eve day isn't a downer day at the B.O.; some people include the movies as part of their year-end festivities.
The DC's fish man hit $748.8M WW, eclipsing the entire global life of Justice League ($657.9M) and Marvel's Doctor Strange ($677.7M). Yes, it's true: Warners has resuscitated DC. Aquaman propels Warner Bros. worldwide for 2018 past $5.3 billion.
On Screen Engine/ComScore's PostTrak, which continues to poll into a film's second weekend, found that women over 25 at 21% are still Jason Momoa's biggest fans, giving Aquaman its best gender score of 84%. Moms are out-numbering dads in attendance, 52% to 48%, and they're smitten with this DC superhero by a wide gap, 82% to 60%. Families are repping close to a third of the crowd, and guys under 25 make-up the biggest portion of moviegoers at 31%.
Industry sources do not consider Disney's $130M musical sequel Mary Poppins Returns, a homerun, rather a double for the studio of franchise hits (the Burbank lot set an industry record this year at the domestic B.O. with $3 billion-plus). The female-skewing musical is filing an estimated $28M which is one of the few films in the top 10 to big huge big gains weekend-over-weekend with +19%. Rivals snipe that the Poppins package is too British, too Caucasian in its draw (on PostTrak, that demo reps 70% of the general audience), and that there was a missed opportunity here by not having Hamilton Tony and Grammy winner Lin-Manuel Miranda pen the songs.
But despite all this nay say, it's a musical, which means it's a sleeper, and Poppins with a $98.9M running cume remains 102% ahead of The Greatest Showman's $49M at the same point in time. Poppins will easily cross $100M by tomorrow in its 13th day.
Paramount's Bumblebee is now in a fight with Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse for 3rd place, each respectively grossing $20.5M and $19.3M (updating). Rivals say that a film like Bumblebee, which has a great 4 1/2 stars among general audiences on PostTrak and fantastic reviews with a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, should be elsewhere on the calendar, especially if Paramount was trying to revamp this brand. The VW bug is being stalled by too much fanboy clutter and needs to breath. Bumblebee should be able to drive past $100M-plus, but the bigger question is whether he makes more than the last Transformers movie, The Last Knight, which is the lowest-grossing at the domestic B.O. with $130.1M. Bumblebee through 10 days should total $66.8M, which, versus the first 10 days of Last Knight, is 26% behind. But remember, with Transformers movies, it's all about China in the end. Spider-Verse, meanwhile, is expected to hit $104.6M.
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