As the holiday season continues to roll on, Aquaman remained the leader of the Christmas box office with a healthy lead on Christmas Eve.
Before we get into the numbers, Christmas Eve is typically the slowest day of the holiday box office while grosses surge on Christmas Day. All of the new releases came in lower than they did on Sunday but expect all of them to rebound today as moviegoing becomes a prime option for families on Christmas.
Aquaman took in $10.95 million Christmas Eve, a 42% decline from Sunday. Counting all of Aquaman‘s preview money plus a $68 million 3-day, the running total is now at $83.6 million. If Aquaman surges as it should today, the film should have at least $100 million by the end of Christmas day. Last year, when Christmas fell on a Monday, Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle grossed $19.1 million so a gross close to that could be in the cards for Aquaman.
Taking second is Mary Poppins Returns with $6.1 million, down 25% from Sunday. The smaller decline from Sunday to Monday is a good sign of the film’s legs and shows that it’s going to have run similar to most movie musicals that don’t explode out the gate but gross steadily at the box office. Mary Poppins Returns has grossed $38.4 million to date.
Taking third is Bumblebee with $3.75 million, down 39% from Sunday. Bumblebee is in line to be at about $32-35 million by end of today which is where most insiders pegged it at. Bumblebee is in direct competition with Aquaman and Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse so it’s essentially sharing that audience. Word of mouth is still strong though and it still has some solid grosses ahead. Bumblebee has grossed $25.3 million to date.
Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse earned $3.3 million down 38% from Sunday. The film has a running total of $68.1 million in fourth place and is performing just fine. I expect a significant surge for the film today as it’s a prime choice for families.
In 8th place Monday was the weekend’s fourth wide release, Second Act, starring Jennifer Lopez. The film grossed $1 million on Christmas Eve, down 46% from Sunday. The film has grossed $7.4 million to date and it should be thankful for its $16 million price tag because it would otherwise be among the lump of coal with Welcome To Marwen which grossed a mere $490,000 on Christmas Eve, down 25% from Sunday. The decline is one of the lowest from Sunday to Monday but since it got off to such a soft start, it really doesn’t matter. Marwen has grossed $2.8 million to date.
