Weekend Estimates: Moana Narrowly Beats Office Christmas Party

December 11, 2016

Moana

Moana will get to enjoy one last weekend at the top of the box office chart, in spite of a good debut for Office Christmas Party. Disney’s animated adventure will post about $18.8 million in its third weekend, for $145 million to date. It’s beginning to lag behind the performance of Frozen, which made $22.6 million in its third weekend in wide release, and had amassed $164.8 million. That still puts Moana well on course for $300 million domestically, although $350 million is looking like a stretch. Internationally, Moana will earn around $23.5 million this weekend, taking its total overseas to $93.8 million, and its global haul to $238.8 million.

In second place, Office Christmas Party has quite a bit to celebrate. A $17.5 million opening isn’t setting any records, but it’s a solid number for some seasonal counter-programming, and puts it on course for a break-even or better performance, depending on how it does internationally. Its opening compares favorably to The Night Before, which earned $9.88 million on its opening weekend, and its performance is essentially the reason why the total box office for the weekend will be up about 10% from this time last year, when all films combined made $77.5 million.

Also helping are a number of expansions for Oscar hopefuls, and one gigantic opening weekend. Nocturnal Animals expanded into 1,262 theaters this weekend and will earn around $3.2 million for seventh place. Its $2,500 theater average suggests it won’t go much further. Just behind it on the chart, but with an average of $8,621 per theater, is Manchester-by-the-Sea, which is also set for around $3.2 million, but from just 366 locations. Also expanding wide-ish, but with less success, is Miss Sloane, with $1.9 million from 1,648 theaters.

The gigantic opening is coming from La La Land, which Lionsgate projects will open with $855,000 from just five locations. Its average of $171,000 per location is the second-best all time for a live action film, behind only The Grand Budapest Hotel, and a similar strong run and awards accolades looks a virtual certainty at this point, although it’s impossible to know at this stage how many top prizes La La Land will end up with, of course.

Also notable in limited release this weekend are Jackie, which will pick up another $495,000 from 26 theaters, for an average of $19,000, and Lion, which will earn about $172,000 from 15 venues and remain in the $10,000-average-club for a third weekend.

- Weekend estimates

- Moana comparison chart
- Office Christmas Party comparison chart
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them comparison chart
- Arrival comparison chart
- Allied comparison chart
- Marvel Cinematic Universe at the box office

Disclosure: Manchester-by-the-Sea and Jackie were produced by clients of our research and analytical services.

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Moana, Lion, Manchester by the Sea, Nocturnal Animals, La La Land, Miss Sloane, Office Christmas Party, Jackie, Marvel Cinematic Universe