Godzilla Minus Zero is set to stomp to #1 as The Cat in the Hat looks to underperform

Three years ago Godzilla Minus One came out the weekend after Thanksgiving with barely any marketing, opened third with $11.4M from 2,308 theaters, and then legged out 5x to $57.1M, the biggest run a Japanese Godzilla film has ever had here. The sequel walks in with all of that goodwill and about 1,000 more theatres at 3,254 theaters, which also includes IMAX screens (it’s the first Japanese production shot for the format). In our November preview we had it at $25–35M and leaned to the top half, and tracking has barely moved since, which is good news since it already started out relatively high.

The reviews are still very good at 90%, down a little from the 95% it had in October. Japanese imports have been opening like tentpoles lately: Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle did $70.6M last September, Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero did $21.1M and Chainsaw Man’s Reze Arc $18.0M. Those are fan-driven openings that land big on Thursday and Friday, but they often burn out hard and drop big in their second weekends. We can definitely expect a bigger Friday than Minus One had, with significantly shorter legs this time around.

Against the American Godzillas it holds up well too. Godzilla vs. Kong opened to $31.6M in 2021 while it was also streaming on HBO Max, King of the Monsters did $47.8M and Godzilla x Kong $80.0M. A Japanese-language film landing around Godzilla vs. Kong would have been unthinkable a few years ago. It’ll also be the biggest start GKIDS has ever had by some distance: The Boy and the Heron, its biggest film, opened to $13.0M and finished at $46.8M, and Minus Zero should pass that total inside its first ten days. The only warning sign we’re seeing is a slowdown in presales in these last few days leading to release, which could suggest the movie is incredibly fan-driven, which could impact the opening and legs over the weekend after a very big opening day.

Where it ends up depends on how long it keeps its IMAX screens, and that isn’t long. The Dune re-releases take them on November 12 and The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping arrives a week later, so a Minus One-style 5x is off the table. We’d expect something closer to 2.5x, meaning $70M+ is absolutely on the table.

A month ago this looked like the safest family opening of the fall. Boxoffice Pro started it at $40–50M on October 9, we had it at $30–40M when we wrote our November preview, and it’s now at $15–20M, with ticket sales barely moving in this final week before release. The early reviews haven’t helped either: only 13 of the first 26 on Rotten Tomatoes are positive, with the main complaint being that it doesn’t feel like Dr. Seuss.

For context, even the much-maligned Mike Myers version opened to $38.3M from 3,464 theaters in 2003 and got to $101.0M. The Grinch opened to $67.6M on this same weekend in 2018. Those aren’t the comps now. The closer one is Coyote vs. Acme, which opened to $15.9M in August and legged out 3.8x to $60.1M, and The Garfield Movie, $24.0M and $92.0M.

The two things still working in its favour are the fact that this has easy potential to attract casual walk-ups because of the brand name recognition, and the calendar: apart from Wildwood, it has the family audience to itself until Hexed on November 25, and family films with an open run tend to hold. It’s also been pretty slow generally for family films this last few months, so this may just be something to take the kids to where parents already know the brand. A $17M start with Coyote’s legs gets it to around $65M, which is a tough result on a $92M budget for Warner Bros., who will want to hope for solid holds into Thanksgiving and decent international business.

This one has come out of nowhere. Boxoffice Pro had it at $4–6M in early October and now has it at $10–15M, which would make it Angel’s best opening since Young Washington back in the summer. Joel Smallbone of the Christian band for KING + COUNTRY stars and co-directs with his brother Ben, and it’s a Christmas-season musical about a soldier and a slave who fall in love during the Revolutionary War.

Angel’s recent openings give it a decent ladder: David did $22.0M last December, The King of Kings $19.4M in April 2025 and Young Washington $19.4M over July 4th weekend this year. Those films are front-loaded, though, with Young Washington falling 64% in its second weekend. The caveat here is that we don’t truly have a good broad sense for if this one can get to those mid-teens or if it does well, but settles closer to $9–10M. At this point, we just don’t have enough data yet. Still, this clearly has gained traction and has the potential to crack into the double digits.

After finally getting to #1 on Halloween weekend with $11.4M, down 39%, You Can See Everything now faces three new wide releases for the first time. Its biggest day last weekend was Sunday at $4.3M, up 20% on Saturday, as people went to parties on Halloween night and caught up the day after. A24 still hasn’t sent any weekdays, as usual, so once again we’re going in without a Monday or Tuesday to read.

It’s at $64.7M on a $7M budget, already the third biggest documentary we track, and March of the Penguins ($77.4M) is next, with Fahrenheit 9/11 ($119.0M) the only one above that. Borat, the comp we keep coming back to, fell 48% in its third weekend and then 29% in its fourth, but that fourth weekend was Thanksgiving, so it isn’t a clean comp here. It’s also not clear if comping to those actually makes sense here, as opposed to just comparing to well reviewed A24 films, which may be the better call here. By that measure, Marty Supreme has a fairly similar $12.6M third weekend and dropped 40% in its 4th to $7.5M, which would be a really strong result to match here. Our model has it at $88.5–106.8M on 6.25x legs. In October we said we saw a path to $100M+, and that is still alive, although we’d expect this to finish up closer to around $90M or so, becoming A24’s 3rd biggest film of all-time domestically - only behind Marty Supreme ($96M) and Backrooms ($197M).

Wildwood had the best hold in the top five last weekend, down just 27% to $8.9M, and its Sunday jumped 38% on Saturday, the biggest Sunday increase of any film in the top five, as families came out the day after Halloween. Like A24, Fathom hasn’t reported Monday or Tuesday yet. This is the first weekend it has to share families with a new animated film, though with The Cat in the Hat’s buzz where it is, that may hurt less than it would have a month ago. Something in the -35% to -45% range gets it to $5–6M. Our model has $44.3–52.3M, which is still a long way short of its $100M budget, but a pretty strong result for LAIKA and a nice rebound from 2019’s Missing Link, which finished at just $16.7M in the states.

Clayface fell 54% to $11.0M on Halloween weekend, which is a pretty solid result for the genre (both horror and superhero). This weekend it does face some pretty intense direct competition from Godzilla, so another -50% or so puts it around $5.5M. Our model has it at $72.1–80.1M, which looks out of reach at this pace; it’s heading for closer to $60–65M. On a $40M budget with $86.7M already in worldwide, it’s still a win for DC Studios, but does raise an interesting dilemma: is it worth releasing these smaller, lower budget movies if they don’t really move the DCU forward and also aren’t making a ton of money? Selfishly, and from an artistic POV in our opinion, the answer is a resounding yes, but the business would probably want to see bigger returns ($100M+) to justify that.

In our November preview we said this one could break double digits and take Baahubali 2’s $10.4M record for an Indian film in North America. That’s looking unlikely now, but we’re still seeing it as a strong performer with at least $5M over four days from 1,300 theaters, which is the widest release an Indian film has ever had here, and presales for the weekend were close to $3M as of Tuesday, with more than $1.2M of that from paid premieres on Wednesday night. One prediction out there has $11.9M for Friday to Sunday, which is definitely still possible, but breaking double digits would be less likely than sticking in the singles range as of right now. The comps are Kalki 2898 AD ($5.7M for the three days, $11.2M including its previews), RRR ($9.5M) and Jailer 2, which did $3.1M from 800 theaters last month. Reviews are thin so far, 40% from 10.

Martin McDonagh’s films usually start small and build. Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri opened in four theaters to $322K and got to $54.5M, and The Banshees of Inisherin opened in four to $184K and finished at $10.6M. The only time he went wide out of the gate was Seven Psychopaths, $4.2M from 1,480 theaters in 2012. Searchlight is going wider than usual with this one at around 1,000 theaters, and Variety has it at $5–7M, a little under the $6–10M we said in October. It’s sitting at 94% from 138 reviews with huge Oscar buzz for John Malkovich, so the opening is just the start here.