Wish's Opening Weekend: How Did it Do?

I wrote this after the first weekend but I was delayed in putting it up. Here it is anyway--with an update.

BoxOffice Pro projected for Wish a $35-$44 million gross over its first Friday-to-Sunday period--and $49-$66 million over the five-day Wednesday-to-Sunday period of the long Thanksgiving weekend.

As it happens the film made less than the bottom end of the range for the 3-day period over the whole five-day period--a mere $32 million (of which a bit under $20 million was collected over Friday, Saturday and Sunday). This is significantly below expectations that were already weak to begin with for a major Disney animated release (indeed, were weak for such a film even before being revised considerably downward this past month)--to say nothing of a movie that seems to have initially been conceived as a grand 100th anniversary event celebrating the founding of the historic studio.*

Of course, as I keep saying cinematic hits may be becoming less front-loaded, and we forget that at our peril. Certainly box office watchers were quicker than they ought to have been to write off both those Disney releases Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Elemental (both of which had better than expected holds, with Guardians in the end looking respectable, and Elemental going from flop to hit in the process), while this very weekend the Hunger Games prequel had a better than expected hold itself, indicating some hope for a movie that had also had a disappointing debut. The holiday season seems especially likely to work out this way for Disney releases. (Remember, even before the pandemic upended the film market, how things went for Mary Poppins Returns?) Of course, it will take quite the multiplier to make even the low end recently estimated for the whole-run gross possible--even quintupling the five-day gross does not get one much further than $150 million or so, beneath the bottom end of the range Boxoffice Pro anticipated for the movie a week before its release ($165 million). Still, it may be safest not to rush to the cry of "FLOP! FLOP! FLOP!" just yet.

* The expectation for the three-day period as of a month ago had been $45-$65 million, and $64-$94 million for the first five days in release.

UPDATE: Wish has had its second weekend which saw a 61 percent drop for the film from its unprepossessing opening, leaving it with a mere $42 million after ten days--less than the bottom end of the range for the first three days in the first Boxoffice Pro forecast. The result is that it will be tough for the movie to get to $100 million, never mind $165 million (or the near-$300 million previously treated as a serious possibility).