Cats, Kaiju and a Quarter Quell

Dr. Seuss has a pretty good track record at the box office. The Grinch opened to $66.1M on this exact weekend in 2018 and legged to $266.3M, The Lorax did $70.2M and $214.0M, and even Horton Hears a Who! got to $155.0M off a $45.0M start. The one blemish is this exact property: the Mike Myers live-action Cat in the Hat opened to $38.3M in November 2003, finished at $101.0M on a $109M budget, and was reportedly the reason the Seuss estate stopped licensing live-action adaptations altogether. Twenty-three years later Warner Bros. is trying it again in animation, with Bill Hader as the Cat and Matt Berry as the Fish.

Warner Bros. Pictures Animation hasn’t had an easy run with family IP. The Lego Movie’s $69.1M and The Lego Batman Movie’s $53.0M are the high-water marks, and the last few years have been Space Jam: A New Legacy at $31.1M, DC League of Super-Pets at $23.0M and Tom & Jerry at $14.1M. Tracking has it in between: Boxoffice Pro came down from $40–50M to $35–45M this week, and Box Office Theory is at $25–35M with a $108–144M domestic total. While they’ve had some hits, Warner Bros. is not on the same level as Disney with Disney Animation and Pixar, or Universal with DreamWorks and Illumination.

That being said, The Cat in the Hat is as recognisable as any kids’ property in the country, and it has the family lane completely to itself until Hexed at Thanksgiving, so it has the potential to be a hit despite the Warner Bros. animation track record. If we’re picking good comparisons now, the hope would be for it to do about as well as Hoppers did back in March with a $45.3M opening and a $166M domestic final, about the same as Horton Hears a Who!, which we’ll add as another good comparison point here. That being said, it’s certainly not a given, and this could easily open around $30M and finish up below $100M.

At this point, something between that $30M and the $45M of Horton Hears a Who!, Hoppers, and Trolls ($46M, $153M dom. total) feels the most likely, which should get this one above $100M. The hope is that it gets as close as possible to those other 3 films and is a $150M movie as opposed to a $100M one.

Scenario A: around $35M, and a run to around $110M. Scenario B: $40M+ and a shot at $150M, if the reviews land and families treat it like The Grinch.

Compare them day by day: The Cat in the Hat vs Hoppers vs Trolls vs Horton Hears a Who!.

Three years ago Godzilla Minus One opened to $11.4M in 2,308 theaters on the weekend after Thanksgiving, with barely any marketing, and then legged 5x to $57.1M, won the visual effects Oscar and became the biggest Japanese live-action film ever released here. That is the goodwill the sequel is walking in with, and the difference this time is that Toho’s own GKIDS is releasing it, it was shot for IMAX, and tickets went on sale a full month out with early IMAX screenings on November 3, the same day it opens in Japan.

Boxoffice Pro has it at $25–35M and says it has been climbing since presales opened; Box Office Theory is at the same $25–35M with a domestic total somewhere between $53M and $94M. The reviews are already in from the festival run, 95% from 41 so far, and Demon Slayer’s $70.6M opening in September showed Japanese imports can now open like tentpoles when the fans decide to turn up on opening night. We’re expecting this one breaks out to the top half of our $25–35M range, about what Godzilla vs. Kong did ($31.6M) and close to triple Minus One’s start. From there, this one should head to at least $75M or so. We don’t expect Minus One-style holds since we think the demand will be there from day 1. To keep expectations in check, anything over $20M opening is a great result here, and we expect this to easily clear that bar.

Scenario A: opening $30M+ and $70M+ domestic. Scenario B: $40M+ and a run topping Godzilla: King of the Monsters.

Compare them day by day: Godzilla Minus Zero vs Minus One vs Godzilla vs. Kong vs King of the Monsters.

Johnny Depp hasn’t headlined a studio movie since Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald in 2018, and Paramount is betting that a Dickens retelling with Depp as Scrooge is the way to bring him back. Ti West directing is the odd part: his X trilogy opened at $4.2M, $3.1M and $6.7M, and they’re thematically completely different vibes, which means this one could go either way. Rupert Grint, Ian McKellen and Andrea Riseborough costar here. What does tell you something is the test screening, which Puck reported scored in the 80s with Depp himself at 90 among women over 35. That’s a surprisingly strong result, and if that translates into strong reviews and word of mouth, this could actually break out more than we are currently anticipating.

The comparisons here give us a wide range. Disney’s A Christmas Carol opened to $30.1M on this weekend in 2009 and got to $138M, and The Best Christmas Pageant Ever opened to $10.8M in November 2024 and legged to $40.0M. Tracking says $25–35M and we’re a little under it: the trailer leans dark, and the last time Depp fronted a non-franchise studio film, Black Mass, it opened to $22.6M. And the stills we’ve seen so far have looked, frankly, a little goofy. But a Christmas movie opening six weeks before Christmas gets to play all the way through if it’s a crowd pleaser, which is why the opening matters less here than for anything else this month. $20M+ and decent reviews can turn this into a $75M movie.

Scenario A: low $20s and a long run to $75M+. Scenario B: $30M+, the test score is real and the over-35 crowd shows up like it did for Practical Magic 2.

Compare them day by day: Ebenezer vs The Best Christmas Pageant Ever vs A Christmas Carol.

Lionsgate’s Hunger Games openings have gone one direction for over a decade. The Hunger Games opened to $152.5M in 2012, Catching Fire went up to $158.1M, Mockingjay Part 1 came down to $121.9M, Part 2 to $102.7M, and then the prequel, The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, opened to $44.6M in November 2023 on its way to $166.4M. Snow’s film was adapted from a book nobody loved, with a lead cast nobody knew. Haymitch’s film is a different proposition: the Sunrise on the Reaping novel sold 1.2M copies in the US in its first week, more than double Ballad, the cast has Jesse Plemons, Elle Fanning, Kieran Culkin and Ralph Fiennes around newcomer Joseph Zada, and the trailer did 109M views in its first 24 hours, the biggest launch in Lionsgate’s history.

Tracking has started to show up at $60M+, which this far out feels about right. The last prequel showed how much of the 2013 audience the franchise has lost, and a budget reported north of $150M needs more than Ballad’s $166M domestic to work. But everything about this one is bigger than Ballad: the book, the cast, a premium-screen window with nothing else big until Doomsday on December 18. This could also become the de facto choice for Thanksgiving this year, assuming good reviews/word of mouth (and especially so if the Focker film gets bad word of mouth), which can genuinely carry it off of a strong opening. We’re thinking it opens to at least $50M, as high as $70M if the reviews are good. This is the one film in November with a genuine shot at $200M domestic if that happens: Ballad legged 3.7x through the holidays; that kind of run from $65M is $240M.

Worldwide is where the franchise has been steadier: Ballad did $347.9M with international roughly matching domestic, and Mockingjay Part 2 did $646.1M. Something around $400M worldwide is the baseline here, and anything over $500M makes a fifth Hunger Games film close to a certainty. At this point, that total feels very reasonable.

Scenario A: mid $50s and a Ballad-style run to $175–200M+. Scenario B: $75M+ and a Thanksgiving-fuelled run back to $250M or so, closer to Mockingjay Part 2’s $281.7M than to Songbirds & Snakes’ $166M.

Compare them day by day: Sunrise on the Reaping vs The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes vs Mockingjay Part 2.

The Fockers are one of the biggest comedy franchises ever made, even if it’s somewhat of a relic now. Meet the Parents opened to $28.6M in October 2000 and legged to $166.2M, Meet the Fockers opened to $46.1M over Christmas 2004 and got to $279.2M on 6x legs, and Little Fockers opened to $30.8M in December 2010 and still finished at $148.4M despite horrible reviews. That’s an impressive track record for a genre that usually struggles with the follow-up; there’s an abundance of comedy sequel flops to big breakout originals, so Fockers has a track record in rarified air. Universal has brought back De Niro, Stiller, Wilson, Polo and Danner, handed it to John Hamburg, who co-wrote all three originals and directed I Love You, Man, and added Ariana Grande straight off Wicked as the girlfriend of Greg’s now-grown son.

Nobody is tracking this one yet besides us, so this will firm up more as we get closer to release. But generally, Thanksgiving is a good slot for a broad comedy that can become the default family four-quadrant choice. As mentioned, legacy comedy sequels have been hit and miss lately and sixteen years is a long gap for a franchise aimed at parents. But every one of these films has legged at least 4.8x, a Wednesday start gives it the holiday weekdays, and Grande is a genuine draw here to bring in a new younger audience. Assuming the reviews are just fine or better (this doesn’t need great reviews to succeed, it just needs to avoid horrible ones), we’re expecting around $35M for the three-day and $50M ish over the five, with a run past $125M if it is any good.

Scenario A: mid $30s / $50M five-day, Little Fockers-sized. Scenario B: $40M+ three-day, Grande pulls the Wicked crowd and it chases Meet the Fockers.

Compare them day by day: Focker-in-Law vs Little Fockers vs Meet the Fockers vs Meet the Parents.

Disney Animation at Thanksgiving is the most reliable date on the calendar when the film is a sequel… and a coin flip when it isn’t. Moana 2 and Zootopia 2 opened to $139.8M and $96.8M on this weekend the last two years, and both legged to $400M+ domestic runs (and $1B+ worldwide). The originals are the other story: Encanto opened to $27.2M for the three-day ($40.6M over five) in 2021 and legged to $96.1M, Strange World did $12.2M in 2022, and Wish $19.7M for the three-day ($31.6M over five) in 2023 on its way to $64.0M. Those last two are the reason this one is a question mark, and why Disney has reportedly reworked the story at least once since it was announced.

Hexed looks a lot more like Encanto than Wish: a teenage girl and her mother, a world of witches, Steinfeld and Jodie Foster, and a Lilo & Stitch short in front of it, which Disney only does when it wants families to show up for something unfamiliar. Cat in the Hat will have had three weeks in the family lane by then, so there is room for both. We’re thinking $30M for the three-day and mid $40s over the five, Encanto-ish, with the Christmas corridor to get it to $100M. At this point this feels far more likely than a Wish-style flop, even if it doesn’t get to breakout $150M+ territory, which is where ultimately these movies need to be hitting.

Our call: around $30M three-day and an Encanto-style $90M.

Compare them day by day: Hexed vs Wish vs Strange World vs Encanto.

Labor Day falls on September 7 this year, the latest it can possibly land, which means the four-day frame sits entirely in September and the summer season gets a nineteenth week it does not usually get. In terms of new releases, it’s bleak. The first Fall opened to $2.5M in August 2022 and finished at $7.2M domestic and $21.8M worldwide, which is a modest result until you learn it was made for about $3 million. Lionsgate is going out Wednesday to grab the full four days, but it’s hard to imagine anyone is clamoring to see this one, although with the original opening to only $2.5M, they could feasibly double or triple the opening weekend here (even if the gross is still low).

The original grossed $46.9M domestic in 1998 and was written off as a flop on a $60M budget. It then spent almost three decades becoming the kind of film people quote and rewatch every year. Warner Bros. is releasing the sequel entirely due to that second audience, bringing back both leads that made the first one special, and hoping it can open to at least $30M.

If it can get to $30M, count that as a success here. Anything more is a great sign, but it will probably need to open closer to $40M for a shot at hitting $100M domestically. It’s hard to say right now, but there are signs forming that $40M could be possible, with some even seeing it up at $50M. We’re not seeing the breakout signs that would necessarily point to an opening that high right now, but the floor seems to have increased from $20M to $30M, which is a great sign and enough to look for an opening close to $40M if things go well. That’s enough to probably get it to $100M+ domestically and also give September a much-needed boost. Even if it opens lower at $30M, it can ride that to around $75M domestically or so, which we should count as a win. Of course, reviews and word of mouth will play a big role here.

Every one of the four biggest September openings ever is a horror film. It did $123.4M in 2017, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice $111.0M in 2024, It: Chapter Two $91.1M in 2019 and The Conjuring: Last Rites $84.0M last year. Horror breakouts own September, and Sony has put an $80M R-rated reboot from the hottest director in the genre right in the middle of it.

You would think this forecast looks way too high until you see who is attached as the director. Zach Cregger’s last two films were Barbarian, which opened to $10.5M and legged to $40.8M on a $4.5M budget, and Weapons, which opened to $43.5M and finished at $151.6M domestic and $266.0M worldwide on $30M. More importantly, both rode great reviews and word of mouth, and after Weapons, people are genuinely excited to see what he does next. That’s more than enough to pull the Resident Evil franchise out of its slow decline over the decades.

Unless something falls apart in the next few weeks, we think this genuinely can top $40M on opening weekend, which would be the biggest opening in the history of the Resident Evil franchise by a distance. If it can go any higher depends entirely on if the reviews materialize and if buzz can grow from here. Either way, we feel like this can ride that opening to $100M+ domestically, and when you add international in, that’s a healthy profit on the $80M budget (which is genuinely high by horror standards).

DreamWorks has run this play before and it worked. The Wild Robot opened to $35.0M on September 27, 2024 and finished at $268.0M domestic, an original animated film with no franchise behind it that turned a soft opening into a 7.7x run because families kept coming back through October. Transformers One tried the same slot a week earlier that year, opened to $24.6M and stopped at $59.1M.

The difference between those two outcomes is entirely word of mouth, and that is what to watch here. It also has to be said that animation can struggle when it’s in the adventure genre, and this looks squarely in that realm. It also does not have a bestselling novel backing it up like The Wild Robot did. At this point, it feels more likely this one lands in the teens than past $30M, but it could have a shot to break $20M and ride good word of mouth (if it gets it) to a solid total when all is said and done. We do think breaking $100M domestic, at this point, appears out of reach.