Box Office Update: Boy and the Heron #1 while Beyoncé sees massive drop

Every Thursday, we here at Joblo put out our weekly predictions for the upcoming weekend box office. When we do that, we do the research in seeing where tracking has the new release movies hitting, what older films can these newer films be compared to give us a better understanding of how they may perform and what type of potential drop off films will have week to week based off of critical and audience reactions. And yet, sometimes with all of that research and hard work, we can still get things wrong! It is for that very reason that in our Thursday predictions this week, I saw Beyoncé having a far better second week hold than she appears to be having!

First place, as predicted, is the latest from legendary Academy Award Winning animator Hayao Miyazaki as The Boy and the Heron will launch with a little under $11 million. While that number may seem a bit shallow for a number one opener, it is actually a really great start as it represents Miyazaki’s largest domestic debut ever and is only about $4-$5 million away from becoming his highest grossing film ever at the domestic box office. You can check out Steve Seigh’s 9/10 review here or Chris Bumbray’s 9/10 review here.

Coming in second place with another small week to week drop is The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes with an estimated take around $9 million putting this $100 million budgeted prequel at a $135 million domestic total ($255 Million worldwide). Despite all of The Hunger Games films being based off pre-existing books, I wonder if the execs at Lionsgate are contemplating a sequel to the prequel that is wholly original (although if you do, be careful: Game of Thrones tried the same thing!)

With those two films coming in first and second, here is where you would expect me to say that Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is coming in third… but Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is not coming in third. Instead, Beyoncé is losing to the smooth vocal stylings of Godzilla as the Japanese language film, that is now the highest grossing live action Japanese language film ever at the domestic box office, is coming in third with around $6.5 million followed by the smooth vocal stylings of Anna Kendrick and Justin Timberlake as their animated Threequel Trolls Band Together is having a solid hold with a weekend in the $6 million range. It seems that in the battle of animated films, audiences have spoken and chosen Trolls over Disney’s Wish.

With a sizable drop of over 75%, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé is seeing a second weekend gross of just around $5 million. That drop is steeper than Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour’s 64% second week decline, but that movie started with over $92 million, so even with that decline it still had a solid second week take of $33.2 million. It is also a worse second week decline than concert films such as Hannah Montana and Miley Cyrus: Best of Both Worlds (67%), Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (55%) and Michael Jackson: This is It (43%). I will say it: last week everyone was singing this films praises because it had a solid opening for the first week of December, but in the wake of Taylor Swift’s opening, that number was pretty abysmal. This second week drop shows that the people that wanted to see this film by Beyoncé, saw it and didn’t feel the need to go back.

This weekend’s numbers look to be one of the worst of the year, luckily next week sees the release of Wonka which is currently tracking in the mid $30 million range, but with the way reviews have been coming in for this movie, I can see it flying past those expectations (although you will have to come back on Thursday to read my official predictions!)

What do you make of Beyoncé’s cataclysmic drop? Let us know in the comments and don’t forget to check back tomorrow when we have a full run down on this week’s box office.