In a pretty shocking turn of events the multi nominated stage adaptation The Color Purple had a massive Christmas Day, taking in an estimated $18.1 million (per Deadline) in just one day. To put that into perspective, tracking (and our own predictions) saw the film taking in around $10-$12 million. I saw the writing on the wall for this one when I looked at my local theaters ticket sales on Christmas Day and noticed that The Color Purple had mostly sold out showings throughout the day.
What does this mean going forward? With a tremendous single day take and an A cinemascore alongside a solid 94% audience score and good critical reception (including a 7/10 from our own Chris Bumbray) mixed with some great awards season buzz (the film has already racked up nearly 60 nominations including 5 Critics Choice Award Nominations and 2 Golden Globe nominations), you can expect The Color Purple to have some great legs throughout the season and possibly become the biggest hit of the Holiday Season.
That honor is generally reserved for big budget tent pole films, but this seasons offering of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom is landing with just a $38.8 million holiday take and will quickly fade to obscurity while the other big holiday season musical Wonka sees a $28.7 million Holiday take. The race will be on between Wonka and The Color Purple to see which movie musical becomes the seasons biggest moneymaker.
The good news here is actually for Warner Bros as the studio lays claim to the top 3 films at the holiday box office which is actually a pretty strong headline as studios will generally not release several films at one time to avoid cannibalizing the box office of each film.
Other movies opening on Christmas Day were the George Clooney directed The Boys in the Boat which looks to have taken in just shy of $6 million for the yuletide holiday while the Michael Mann directed Ferrari looks to have taken in just shy of $3 million. Having seen Ferrari last week, I can say that I found it be a pretty enjoyable biopic where Penelope Cruz absolutely stole the show. If she doesn’t land an Oscar nomination for her fierce performance, it would be a tragedy.
Overall the Christmas Day box office looks to have taken in an estimated $157.9 million, which is an 11% increase over last years $142.8 million when Avatar: The Way of Water landed in first place with $63.3 million in its second week of release while 3 new releases failed to impress (Puss in Boots: The Last Wish ($12.4 million), Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody ($4.7 million), Babylon ($3.6 million)… although Puss in Boots played the long game, landing with over $186 million when all was said and done.)
What do you make of The Color Purple’s strong performance? Let us know in the comments along with any movie related Christmas Day memories you may have.