Despite dominating the small screen as the Mother of Dragons Daenerys Targaryen on Game of Thrones, big screen success has been harder to come by for Emilia Clarke. Due to no fault of her own, Terminator: Genisys forced a franchise reboot and Solo: A Star Wars Story seemingly singlehandedly ended the Star Wars anthology films. While not a flashy franchise like those aforementioned titles, Emilia Clarke’s latest movie Last Christmas has quietly made solid money at the box office.
Over a month since its release, Last Christmas has now passed the $100 million milestone at the box office according to Yahoo Entertainment. The holiday romantic comedy from director Paul Feig has made $34.4 million domestically after six weeks in theaters. Internationally, Last Christmas tacked on an additional $66.5 million from 64 foreign markets to bring the film’s total past the $100 million mark.
It’s a solid and somewhat surprising haul for the $25 million Universal film and arguably far better than could have been expected when Last Christmas first hit theaters. Last Christmas debuted in domestic theaters on November 8 and only managed fourth place in its opening weekend with $11.4 million. But you don’t always have to be the fastest out of the gate, sometimes you just need to keep a steady pace.
Last Christmas did just that, quietly maintaining a spot in the top 10 of the domestic box office for five consecutive weeks. This is despite the film receiving highly negative reviews and having its ending largely spoiled ahead of time, much to the dismay of Emilia Clarke.
But critical reviews aren’t everything. Despite having a 47% rotten score on Rotten Tomatoes, the audience score, which is admittedly always a murky water to wade into, sits at an 81%. So audiences that took a chance on Last Christmas may have liked it (although its B- CinemaScore isn’t great).
There is probably also something to be said for the fact that Last Christmas was really the only film of its kind in theaters lately. It is the only romantic comedy out and the only holiday-themed film before Black Christmas hit theaters this past weekend, with those two genres generally relegated to streaming these days.
You have to wonder if Last Christmas would have done slightly better closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas and not one week removed from Halloween but I suppose you could make the case either way. Regardless, Last Christmas didn’t make a lot of noise, but in the end it did pretty well for itself and Emilia Clarke.
Last Christmas is now Universal’s third original comedy this year to pass that magical $100 million mark, following Good Boys and Yesterday.
Last Christmas is still playing. Check out our 2020 Release Schedule to keep track of all of next year’s biggest movies.
