Holiday Box Office Update & Predictions: Mufasa and Sonic 3 are (nearly) too close to call for the Holiday weekend

Friday Update: The gap between Mufasa and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is starting to narrow at the box office. While the Lion King prequel had a decisive win on Christmas Day, Boxing Day was very close. Deadline reports that Mufasa made $12 million, while Sonic 3 was right behind it with $11.5 million. Meanwhile, Nosferatu is holding up well, with a $7.5 million gross yesterday, and the trades predicting it’ll hit $40 million over the 5-day holiday. That’s a great result for a dark, gothic horror film. A Complete Unknown has also been faring well, with it likely to hit $25 million by the end of the holiday, which would mark Searchlight’s best opening since the Disney merger. Certainly, the fact that adult-skewed movies are doing well is good news for the marketplace, although it doesn’t hurt that both films happen to be excellent (they both made my Top 10 of the Year list).

More updates to come!

Original Post: The Christmas box office is proving to be unpredictable this holiday season. While Sonic the Hedgehog 3 slaughtered Mufasa: The Lion King at the box office last weekend, in an altogether unexpected turn of events, the Disney prequel had a monster Christmas Day haul, with Deadline reporting that the film earned a solid $14.7 million. Even more unexpected was the fact that Sonic 3 was beaten by Robert Eggers’s distinctly adult-skewing Nosferatu, which made a rock-solid $11.5 million, compared to Sonic’s $10.5 million. A Complete Unknown, the (awesome) Bob Dylan biopic starring Timothee Chalamet, made $7.1 million to hit fourth place, while Wicked came in fifth with a still-strong $5.4 million. A24’s Babygirl made $1.5 million for seventh place.

So how will the holiday box office shape up? Mufasa has been given new life, so I expect that one to make over $70 million for the five-day holiday, while Sonic 3 should dip to around $50 million. The reversal in box office fortunes for those two movies is one of the biggest surprises of the year as far as I’m concerned, but kudos to Disney, who, in the end, made a wise choice opening the prequel in the Christmas box office corridor, even if it’s unlikely to make anything close to the $1.5 billion the first film did.

For the five-day holiday, Nosferatu should make about $40 million in third place, which would be an amazing result for Focus. It earned a B-minus CinemaScore rating (solid for a horror title). A Complete Unknown should build up momentum as the holiday goes on, with the A-CinemaScore rating pointing to a 5-day result in the $25 million area, while Wicked shouldn’t be too far behind with about $20 million.

Here are our predictions for the 5-day holiday:

1. Mufasa: $70 million
2. Sonic the Hedgehog 3: $50 million
3. Nosferatu: $40 million
4. A Complete Unknown: $25 million
5. Wicked: $20 million

What have you been watching this holiday weekend? Let us know in the comments!