The holiday season has been second only to the summer when it comes to major film releases. Last year we saw Avatar: the Way of Water became a massive smash, but before that, we saw several years of hits like Disney’s string of Star Wars movies and Spider-Man: No Way Home, which also joined the billion-dollar club. However, this December is looking quite different than previous ones, as it appears theater owners are not expecting Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, the movie that would likely be seen as this year’s major franchise smash, to do as well as those that came before.
The first Aquaman made a billion dollars at the global box office, making it the most successful of the modern DC movies, but a Variety report claims that theater owners are not expecting the sequel to follow suit. The last few DC movies, The Flash, Blue Beetle, and the sequel to Shazam! failed to catch on, so there seems to be a feeling it will suffer a similar fate. At the moment Aquaman 2 is tracking for an opening weekend about half of what the first movie did, so this checks out. And if that happens there is a worry the entire season could be lost.
What’s Coming Out Alongside Aquaman 2 This Holiday Season
Of course, even if Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom doesn’t make $1 billion, there are other movies set to come out this season that could bring in the dollars if audiences are attracted to them. There are two musicals, with the Wonka movie starring Timothee Chalamet set to debut on December 15 and The Color Purple release arriving on Christmas day. Illumination animation’s original Migration and the adult drama The Iron Claw with Zac Efron will both debut on December 22, the same day as Aquaman's release date, giving different audiences several choices of what to see.
Aquaman 2 was clearly meant to be the big release of the year. Without a Star Wars or Avatar movie this year other studio Disney -- which has largely dominated this period in recent years -- doesn’t have a tentpole release of its own. This clearly has left the door open for another studio to swoop in. But this year hasn’t been kind to Disney or to WB’s DC films, so the landscape has changed.
Why Theater Owners Are Worried
Even if Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom doesn’t perform as well, that doesn’t mean the season will be a total loss. It’s possible all of these movies coming out in late December could do reasonably well, leading to an overall strong box office, even if there isn’t one strong breakout performer.
However, that’s just not the way the box office has worked in recent years. Theaters are used to giving over a majority of the screens to a single tentpole project in order to meet the excessive demand. The problem is if they do that now, and they don’t pick the right movie, they could end up with a lot of mostly empty theaters. Jim Orr, Universal’s president of domestic theatrical distribution told Variety…
It’s probably not going to be the most spectacular Christmas season. It may give other movies room to overperform.
Whether or not this season is a success, it will almost certainly be interesting to those of us that watch the box office. Perhaps, in this post pandemic landscape where audiences are clearly being more choosy about when they go to the theaters, some of these other movies will be successful.
