With the year over 80% over, a good chunk of the movies destined to make a killing at the box-office have already run their course and are now racking up Blu-Ray and streaming sales. Using normal math, one could figure that the time for blockbusters is done, and that the year is most likely to go out quietly.
In the United States and Canada, however the grosses of movies that open on or around Christmas Day, and the week that follows it, do not follow the rules of "normal" box-office math. As many box-office analysts are fond of saying, in that part of the world, during that brief period of time every day is Saturday, which, barring the opening day of an extremely front-loaded movie, is invariably the single most lucrative day of any the week for any given movie. Because of this unique time of the year, the impossible becomes possible, such as multiple blockbusters thriving side-by-side (e.g. Avatar co-existing with box-office smashes like Sherlock Holmes and Alvin and the Chipmunks), films opening small managing to finish huge (e.g. The Greatest Showman opening to $8 million and going on to finish with $174 million). It's a completely different dynamic from that followed by the average summer blockbuster, which usually adhere to the following rules: 1) opening weekend is usually make-or-break, 2) any competition closer than two weeks away can seriously damage grosses and 3) every dollar earned past the first couple of weeks is a bonus. The pre-Christmas and Christmas day blockbuster, however, is a different animal.
The thing is, the dynamic usually works because at Christmastime, there's usually something for everyone. A movie like Sing can sell $250 million in tickets alongside a $500++ million juggernaut like Rogue One: A Star Wars story because while the latter is busy gobbling up dollars from the 18-to-25, mostly male demographic, the former is busy catering to families, who are out in droves thanks to holidays from school and work. Adults can goose up the grosses of awards-bait like Argo and The Revenant, and basically there's a good time to be had by all.
What makes this year different and worth writing about, in my opinion at least, is that unlike in the past, this Christmas will feature the most number of aspiring blockbusters competing for what is essentially the same patch of box-office real estate.
There are three big guy-centric movies that will compete for the big bucks at or around Christmas, the first being Sony's Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse which, to be fair will be coming out almost two weeks before Christmas Day, around the same time of release of the Star Wars or Tolkien adaptation movies, but it is hitting theaters only one week before the other two aspiring blockbusters of the season, Warner Brothers/DC's Aquaman and Paramount's Transformers spinoff Bumblebee. All three of them, clearly, hope to partake of that sweet, sweet holiday loot, and up until a month or so ago, a fourth movie with an almost identical target demographic, James Cameron's and Robert Rodriguez's manga adaptation Alita: Battle Angel was originally scheduled to open right alongside Aquaman and Bumblebee. Alita: Battle Angel has since moved to February of next year, but it has been replaced with a PG-13 re-release of Deadpool 2, which, while not expected to make serious money, being a re-release, could spoil things for somebody's blockbuster-in-waiting nonetheless. As it is, three brand new movies with considerable audience overlap are going to duke it out and put to the test, more than ever has been done before, just how much the marketplace can expand to accommodate multiple blockbusters.
Personally, as a lifelong fan of the Spider-Man character, I'm most pumped for Into the Spider-Verse, considering that, more than any of the other offerings it looks like something we've never seen before, with its universe crisscrossing plot and its unique and quite honestly eye-popping animation style. I'm rooting for it more than any of the others, and quite frankly, with the earliest release date and family appeal (being an animated film) I think it has the best shot of the three of coming out on top. If nothing else, by the time the melee starts, it will most likely have webbed up about a cool hundred million or so.
Of all the "18 to 25" movies coming out on the weekend before Christmas, Aquaman has the best chance of winning the weekend. Its closest competitor for the crown, the long-awaited Mary Poppins Returns, opens on a Wednesday and will have burned off considerable demand by the weekend. Besides, Disney is most likely playing the long game with that particular film, which will cater to a different demographic, while Aquaman, like any comic-book blockbuster barring Black Panther or Wonder Woman, in contrast, is likely to be frontloaded. Considering that Warner Bros./DC had Aquaman in the can when Justice League tanked a year ago, releasing it in December was arguably the best thing they could have done with it. Had it been released any sooner, it'd still carry the stink of JL's failure, while waiting too long to release it would cast serious doubt on WB's confidence in the film and might also put it in the path of other blockbusters-in-waiting like Captain Marvel. WB marketing got this just right; how much money the movie makes now is all up to...the movie.
For me, the one truly puzzling release of Christmas 2018 is the Transformers prequel (reboot?) Bumblebee, which, in my estimation at least, looks most likely to lose out, if indeed there will be a loser when the dust settles. The truth be told, the thought that this movie could get lost in a sea of blockbusters makes me a little sad, because in over eleven years and six movies, this film, if the trailer is any indication, marks the first time that the folks at Paramount are ditching Michael Bay's brain-dead approach to filmmaking and have elected to actually make a film with heart. Not only is this evident from the trailer which suggests an 80s-set, Iron Giant-inspired narrative, but also from the pedigree of the filmmakers, like Travis Knight, director of the Academy-Award nominated Kubo and the Two Strings, and the two up-and-coming female scriptwriters Christina Hodson and Kelly Fremon Craig, both firsts for the franchise. Oh, and the film also starts Academy Award nominee Hailee Steinfeld as the lead (though to be fair, Mark Wahlberg, lead of the last two Transformers films, also has an Oscar nod under his belt). As odd as this may sound, of all the 18-to-25-skewing movies coming out this December, this movie actually has the most pedigree, though the presence of former wrestler John Cena kind of evens that out a bit.
I'm glad Alita: Battle Angel, which to me looked like the most unique of the entire Christmas bunch, dodged the bullet of having to face off against so many big titles, but even without it in the mix I find myself genuinely curious to see how this box-office battle royale will ultimately play out.
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