2024 Christmas Box Office Predictions

For the first time in ages I’m genuinely pumped for Christmas movies, so let’s make our 2024 Christmas box office predictions!!!

Here are mine. With more than a dozen movie coming out and no reviews for most, it’s a difficult thing to predict an entire box office. But I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it upfront: This could be the biggest Christmas box office ever. As for Christmas day exclusively, that seems to be 2015. I don’t know if that can be beat, because there is no Star Wars here. But for the whole 3-week holiday period? I think it has a chance.

2015, I assume the full record, made about $1.3 billion across three weeks in North America. 2017 made about $1.1 billion. I think 2024 has a very good chance of making over a billion!

So let’s introduce all the contenders across these three weekends, plus Christmas days, and my slightly optimistic 2024 Christmas box office predictions. They’re based on the 5-week tracking, but also my own opinions about what will hit, what will flop, and what will slowly break out.

First up, how many movies will there even be?

Movie Count

In previous years, there have been usually around 12 movies in 1,000+ theaters, and up to 20 in at least 600 (the cutoff for “wide release”). There will also be several platform release movies in only, say, 50 theaters that will open to surprisingly big numbers before they expand nationwide in January.

For example, Silver Linings Playbook in 2012 stayed in 371 theaters for the weeks leading up to Christmas, then barely went wide at 700 theaters on Christmas Day, before it expanded nationwide on January 18th.

Imitation Game also had a huge day on Christmas 2014, making $3 million as it expanded from 25 to 34 theaters.

Platform releases making a big impact on Christmas aren’t that common anymore, though, so we will mostly focus on the wide and nationwide releases.

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2024 Christmas Box Office Predictions – Let’s Start!

Here we go.

Week 0: December 6th

That’s today!

The weekend after Thanksgiving is traditionally considered the Holiday Dead Zone. Because of studio contracts with theaters, a movie typically must play at a theater for 2 weeks before it can be pulled. If a film comes out 2 weeks before Christmas, then it’ll probably be around on Christmas Day, and then all the way to ~January 5th because nothing new comes out the final week of December. But if you release in the Dead Zone, your movie both skips the Thanksgiving period and has risk of getting pulled before Christmas!

So the movies this weekend are typically awful films dumped into 2,000 screens and instantly forgotten about. I’m talking gems like The Pyramid, Just Getting Started, and PLAYMOBIL. The combined opening weekend total of the past ten years of Holiday Dead Zone movies, minus the secret successes, is less than the opening weekend of X-Men Dark Phoenix, to put it into perspective.

Some movies have circumvented the Holiday Dead Zone before, though. The secret successes. Krampus and Violent Night are rare December-released Christmas films. And last year, due to a quirk in the calendar, there were actually two Holiday Dead Zone weeks, but Japanese films Godzilla Minus One and Boy and the Heron used low expectations to strike big and get Oscar victories

We aren’t getting another 2023 this year.

The films releasing wide this weekend are:

• Pushpa: The Rule — Part 2
• The Return
• Solo Leveling
• Werewolves
• Y2K

The first four of these will be a flash in the pan and disappear with less than $20 million. Y2K is an oddball, though, as a quirky A24 horror comedy. It has mixed reviews, which limits its chances, but sometimes these sorts of films become sleeper hits. Will it sleep enough to survive to Christmas Day?

Probably not.

These films will probably make combined less than $30m total, so I’m noting them here, but ignoring them otherwise. They mostly just take up showtime space from the Thanksgiving Quartet!

Thanksgiving Quartet?

If you didn’t hear, Thanksgiving 2024 was the biggest in film history. Wicked, Moana 2, Gladiator 2, and Red One combined to make a gargantuan $675m week in 9 days from 11/22-12/1.

All four of these will still be in wide release by Christmas Day. And all of them except Red One will still be a major force all the way into mid-January. It’s not something we’ve ever seen before in the movie box office, so it adds an extra spicy factor. When four huge movies all hit it big in Thanksgiving, will they help push the Christmas season films up? Or just suck up all the oxygen?

For my prediction, I will be optimistic and say that people are now so jazzed about seeing these four Thanksgiving films that they’re going to see a couple Christmas movies, too. All of moviegoing will benefit in my 2024 Christmas box office predictions.

Week 1: December 13th

The first blockbusters arrive!

Two weeks before Christmas, but a bit earlier than usual. This would be the week when a new Hobbit or Star Wars or Avatar would release, but due to being a bit early, the biggest films are holding off and two B-tier blockbusters take their place.

You saw the same thing in 2018; Spider-Verse, The Mule, and Mortal Engines came out on 12/14 to quiet starts, while Mary Poppins Returns came out the following Wednesday. Then Aquaman, Bumblebee, and the counterprogrammers released on 12/21. Studios tend to put the biggest blockbusters as close to Christmas as possible, while slower-burn titles try for the weekend before to hopefully build up word-of-mouth.

I don’t know if Kraven the Hunter and Lord of the Rings: Anime are exactly slow-burn sleeper hit candidates, but I guess that’s what studios are trying.

Honestly, I think they’ll do fine. Kraven is surprisingly not looking like a total flop, and looks like it’ll well pass the Assassin’s Creed people feared. It’ll fade faster than most Christmas movies, but hopefully not like Mortal Engines..

Lord of the Rings Anime is Hollywood’s newest shot to convert people who normally don’t check out animation, and it’s the first PG-13 animated Hollywood film since……… Beowulf????, so I’m at least HOPING it does well over time. But it’s going to open small.

The holdover films are gonna be huge, though, and that’s the main affair.

My predictions (I like rounding to easy numbers, by the way, I ain’t gonna get too granular):

• Week 1 films:
  • Kraven
    • $25m Opening Weekend (OW)
    • $35m Opening Week (W1)
  • Lord of the Rings Anime
    • $10m OW
    • $15m W1
• Week 0 films:
  • $10m total W2
• Thanksgiving holdovers:
  • Moana
    • $45m W3
    • ~$360m total so far
  • Wicked
    • $40m W3
    • ~$380m total
  • Gladiator 2
    • $15m W3
    • ~$150m total
  • Red One
    • $5m W4
    • ~$95m total
• Week 1 total: ~$170m

$170m in this week compares well to 2018‘s Week 1, and well outpaces 2023‘s which had only one new release. This year’s new releases will gross less than Wonka in its first week, but the Thanksgiving holdovers have all the power.

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Week 2 Part 1: December 20th

This is the big week. The Friday before Christmas, or the Friday following December 15th depending on the calendar, is one of the biggest of the year. And for my 2024 Christmas box office predictions, I will make the contoversial claim: This year’s Week 2 will also be very big.

But since Christmas Day lies midway through the week, we’ll split up the discussion.

First, the December 20th premieres. Two mega blockbusters will release and how they do will shape the rest of the season. Neither one looks to be a Star Wars, Avatar, Spider-Man, Aquaman type film that is so powerful everything else falls beneath it. But if they succeed, they could lift up the movies around them. And if they fail, the Christmas season could collapse like with what happened in 2010 when Tron 2, Yogi Bear, and Narnia 3 disappointed, or what happened in 2023 when Aquaman 2completely collapsed compared to the original.

Mufasa is a tough one. It’s a prequel to the 2019 Lion King, one of the biggest, highest-grossing movies ever, but also a widely hated movie in the pop culture discourse. This one looks better, and has an original story, but character origin prequel films often bomb (Furiosa, Solo, Snake Eyes). It really depends on if the film is good. It’s got to be a really good time, and it has to capture the zeitgeist. It’s either going to be a Wonka or a Bumblebee. I’m hoping for Wonka. I suspect this will start smaller than expected, but if it’s good it’ll end up staying in theaters until well into February.

Sonic 3 is an easy one. It’s a hotly anticipated, red-hot franchise extremely popular with kids, building off an incredibly done hype cycle. That Sonic Generations re-release in October was a huge deal (it came out the same day as my first game!), and the goodwill towards Sonic has never been higher. Even if this gets middling reviews, it’s going to be huge. Five Nights at Freddy’s showed what you can do with a terrible film, and Sonic has already proven itself as a film franchise, so it’s going to go even higher. The forecasts have it at $50-60m opening weekend, but I think it’s going to go higher and higher. I’ll come out swinging and predict $75m OW. It may be frontloaded, but it’ll still be huge.

The third release is a classic counterprogrammer, but this time from Evangelical studio Angel Studios. It’s Homestead, a seemingly mid-budget action film about an apocalyptic war in America–similar to this year’s Civil War but a bit lower-scale, by the trailer. Homestead’s premise is not as timely in the current political climate anymore, at least for its target audience, but I do think it’s being underestmated in the current forecasts. Being an action movie, an adult counterprogrammer, and an obvious political play for conservatives, I think $5m OW is a bit low. If Richard Jewell could get $4m OW off a much less appealing concept, then Homestead can get to $8-$10m.

But the week’s not over yet…!

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Week 2 Part 2: Christmas Day

Christmas Day itself is always fun because new movies always release. It’s often the busiest day of the whole year for movies in America, so a bunch of films will come in and try to ride the wave through the holidays.

The types of films that release on Christmas Day tend to be one of two types. 1) They’re for families, ones where you can bring a group of 5-6 people all at once, where word will spread like wildfire in that 12/26-12/31 stretch to propel it forwards. If it’s a big enough success, it’ll survive through MLK Jr. Day easily. Often a musical. 2) Prestige dramas that want to make an Oscar play, or, failing that, want to move general audiences emotionally with sappy inspiration or righteous anger.

Anyway, this year we have no major blockbusters on Christmas day, but four movies, all potential breakouts:

First is Babygirl, the archetypal A24 holiday release.

In recent years, A24 has been releasing crazy thrillers and bombastic dramas on Christmas Day. They’re usually pretty quick-burn compared to normal holiday films, but Uncut Gems, The Whale, and Iron Claw. I guess they count as prestige movies, sorta?

Babygirl is an old-school erotic thriller, one that is sure to be controversial and divisive. That worked amazingly for Wolf of Wall Street back in the day. Not as well for Hateful Eight (although that one wasn’t in wide release). I don’t think Babygirl will be a particularly big hit, but an opening day of above $2m is likely. Ferrari and All the Money in the World managed that with worse reviews and without the A24 brand. But I don’t know how it’ll fare when its thunder is stolen by another movie from an A24 alumni…

After that one…

A Complete Unknown, the archetypal musical biopic drama.

Timothee Chalamet making another attempt at an Oscar. A big-name director. A well-known musical brand. If it’s really good, it’ll be a nice hit. If it sucks, it’ll fade away like Vice or Bombshell. It’ll definitely be bigger than either of those, though. Vice’s $50m feels like the floor, unless it just sucks. Then it’ll becme like the Whitney Houston movie. I trust in James Mangold, though!

Then…

Fire Inside, the archetypal inspiring sports movie.

This is an increasingly popular counterprogramming choice recently. American Underdog, Boys in the Boat, Concussion to an extent… They’re a little niche and don’t work often in theatrical environments anymore, but they’re perfect as a Christmas counterprogrammer. Fire Inside is apparently very good, and I support Brian Tyree Henry to the ends of the Earth, so I would keep an eye on this one for a breakout. Something similar to Second Act wouldn’t surprise me, where it starts off tiny but ends pretty well at the end and nobody noticed except box office diehards.

Finally…

Nosferatu. This is not a movie with any good comparisons to previous Christmases. It’s sort of a prestige drama, I guess, but also a biggish-budget horror epic. Horror is not particularly popular on Christmas! So who knows how this will go? I know I’m excited, but I live in Japan where I assume this will come out in like August 2025. Tracking says it’s around $15m OW, but it seems very hard to track something like this. If it’s as good as they say it is, it could be huge, though.

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Week 2 Part 3: The Holdovers

That’s (assuming the Week 0 movies are all gone by now) 9 new releases in theaters on Christmas Day, plus the four Thanksgiving movies. It doesn’t LOOK like there will be any platform releases of note this year, unless somehow September 5 or The Brutalist decide to go to 700 theaters. But we are already well set for a very diverse slate of movies.

And don’t forget, the Thanksgiving movies should still be relatively dominant. It’s going to be crazy to see these all mix together and fans of different movies cross-pollinate. More than any other year since 2012, there’s something for everyone.

So then my predictions for this week…

• Christmas Day releases
  • Babygirl
    • $2m opening day (OD)
    • $12m W1
  • A Complete Unknown
    • $6m OD
    • $20m W1
  • Fire Inside
    • $1m OD
    • $10m W1
  • Nosferatu
    • $12m OD
    • $30m W1
• Week 2 weekend releases
  • Mufasa
    • $50m opening weekend (OW)
    • $120m W1
  • Sonic 3
    • $75m OW
    • $150m W1
  • Homestead
    • $10m OW
    • 25m W1
• Week 1 holdovers
  • Kraven
    • $25m W2
    • $60m total
  • Lord of the Rings Anime
    • $15m W2
    • $30m total
• Week 0 holdovers
  • Less than $5m total
• Thanksgiving holdovers
  • Moana 2
    • $45m W4
    • $400m total
  • Wicked
    • $35m W4
    • $420m total
  • Gladiator 2
    • $10m W4
    • $160m total
  • Red One
    • $5m W5
    • $100m total, ekes past this for its final result
• Total: $510m

That would put it just behind the $525m earned in 2015 off the back of Force Awakens and a bunch of solid counterprogrammers. Unlike that year, there is no one film to take the crown, but with the Thanksgiving films so big, and the Christmas movies so appealing, I really think it’s possible to reach this.

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Week 3: December 27th

Now begins that final holiday rampage. Each individual day in this week is like a weekend any other time in the year. Families are home, people are bored at their great aunt’s house for a week, and people just go to the movies a lot. This is the battleground where breakouts take hold, where bad films flame out, where Oscar dreams are made and broken.

It’s incredibly difficult to predict this with so many films bouncing around. No films open on the weekend, so it’s the same thirteenish we have already–although Red One is definitely dead from 12/26-on–in the fray together.

Some movies will collapse. Some movies will do BETTER than previous years. 2019 is the perfect comparison because the calendar matches up. Most movies did a lot better in Week 3, and Little Women significantly so. But 2018 is another pretty close calendar, and most films declined by just a hair. Perhaps in 2019 the shadow of Star Wars loomed over too strongly? 2012, though, shows a healthier mix of movies that went up and movies that went down.

Basically, in that case, we can’t look to the past for many clues. Darn.

So I just have to do my best and hope I can predict which movies will fall and which will rise!

• Week 2 releases
  • Babygirl
    • $10m W2 (minus)
    • $22m total
  • A Complete Unknown
    • $15m W2 (plus, barely)
    • $35m total
  • Fire Inside
    • $20m W2 (plus, a lot)
    • $30m total
  • Nosferatu
    • $30m W2 (plus, barely)
    • $60m total
  • Mufasa
    • $45m W2 (minus)
    • $165m total
  • Sonic 3
    • $80m W2 (plus)
    • $230m total
  • Homestead
    • $10m W2 (minus)
    • 35m total
• Week 1 holdovers
  • Kraven
    • $15m W2 (minus)
    • $75m total
  • Lord of the Rings Anime
    • $20m W2 (plus)
    • $50m total
• Week 0 holdovers
  • Less than $1m total
• Thanksgiving holdovers
  • Moana 2
    • $50m W4 (plus, barely)
    • $450m total
  • Wicked
    • $45m W4 (plus)
    • $465m total
  • Gladiator 2
    • $12m W4 (plus, barely)
    • $172m total
  • Red One
    • $1m W5 (minus)
    • $101m total
• Total: $375m

It won’t come anywhere near 2015, but it’s about even with 2012, 2018, and 2019 with similar or matching calendars.

There’s actually a Week 4 with no new releases of note and no platform expansions currently planned, but the holidays will be over. Everything will fall off to some degree, and the real leggy films will have their due.

The Total for 2024 Christmas Box Office Predictions

So my total prediction is that, barring any major breakouts or flops, the Christmas season box office will be around $1.055 billion across three weeks. That’s about equal with 2017, though not quite near the record of 2015… It’s just really hard to beat Star Wars Episode 7.

But I’m sure these predictions will be wrong for a good portion of these movies, just because of how ridiculously complex it is to predict a season where every single weekday is like a weekend any other time of year.

Will we have a major breakout like Greatest Showman, Anyone But You, or Puss in Boots 2? I hope so, but it’s very hard to see a signal through all the noise with so many releases all at once.

If there was going to be a sleeper hit, I’d put my money on Homestead legging it out surprisingly long and making it to $50-60m. If there was going to be a dramatic breakout hit, I’d guess Lord of the Rings, but only if it’s extremely good–no reviews yet to know. And if there was going to be a horrible catastrophic flop, obviously it would be Mufasa, because Moana and Wicked are killer competition for it–it NEEDS to be a very good film.

But that’s not certain in the slightest.

I’ll check back and see how my overly optimistic 2024 Christmas box office predictions went, once we get into late January or early February!