Mary Poppins Returns started of its holiday run last night and sang its way to the tune of $4.8 million for its opening day.
Early mid-day reports yesterday indicated that the opening day was looking to begin with about $7-8 million but this was due to presales being strong during the day and evening business tapering off a bit more than anticipated. The business slipping in the evening has very little to do with the film which impressed opening day audiences with an “A-” CinemaScore. This has more to do with the time of year and the fact that this period is more about legs and less about huge openings. There was only 6% of K-12 schools off yesterday and many families are also still distracted by pre-holiday activities. Musicals also tend to leg out at the box office with Fox’s The Greatest Showman being a good example as it made 92% of its $174.3 million domestic box office last year after Christmas and largely without Oscar buzz, which is something Mary Poppins Returns actually has.
Mary Poppins Returns opening day is under the $7.2 million Wednesday pre-Christmas opening for Sony’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle last year as well as Disney’s Amy Adams 2007 musical Enchanted which opened the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to $7.96 million but Jumanji had more widespread appeal with most families and Enchanted really ran on its originality at the time of its release. Poppins is 96% higher than the first day of The Greatest Showman a year ago ($2.45 million). Greatest Showman‘s six-day opening was $19 million before it began its leggy run.
