While it's been widely forecasted that 2020 will be a down year at the box office due to less Disney franchise IP on the schedule, the first weekend of the year looks to clear an estimated $143.6M, which is lower than what we were seeing yesterday due to the fact that
Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker's third weekend is slightly lower with a industry estimate of $34.2M, down from the $37M+ Friday midday figure. Disney is calling the weekend at $33.7M. Still the first weekend of 2020 is a tad up over the same period a year ago by +3%.
Skywalker's total per Disney is at $450.8M, 13% behind
Last Jedi which had already crossed the half billion mark by its 17th day of release. Again, the 17th day of release for
Last Jedi happened to be New Year's Eve in its run. Saturday was up for
Skywalker over Friday with $14.3M, +30%, just not as high as many were hoping. Some believe that
Skywalker can still make it to $600M, but could be shorter than that. Global for
Skywalker now stands at $919M and will become Disney's 7th pic from 2019 to cross the $1 billion mark.
As the first release of the decade and 2020, Screen Gems/Sony's
The Grudge didn't cut it with an 'F' CinemaScore and an opening at the lower end of its industry projections of $11.3M — the lowest take ever in Sony's reboots of the Japanese horror series; the 2004 Sarah Michelle Gellar version having a spectacular 3-day of $39.1M and the 2006 sequel opening to $20.8M. Unfortunately, another attempted wet blanket remake from the Sony library following last year's
Charlie's Angels and
Men in Black International. I hear from sources that
The Grudge cost more than $10M, around $12M-$14M and at that level could lose money.
