by Conan Simmons – November 30, 2020 – 6:56 pm
As fully expected the animated offering ‘The Croods: A New Age’ took the number one spot over the extended holiday weekend at the box office. The sequel to 2013’s ‘The Croods’ features the voices of Nicolas Cage, Emma Stone and Ryan Reynolds.
As the only debut to break into the Weekend Top 5 it was left to carry the vast majority of the box office as other holdovers fell nearly 50%, with the sole exception of family film ‘The War with Grandpa’ which saw a mild 13% decline. ‘The Croods: A New Age’ is the only film to earn over $1 million for the weekend.
Overall the holiday weekend saw the box office gain 213% over last weekend.
WEEKEND BOX OFFICE TOP 5 (November 27-29, 2020)
- ‘The Croods: A New Age’ – $9.7 million – animation (debut)
- ‘Freaky’ – $770k – horror comedy (dropping 600k, 46% decline)
- ‘War with Grandpa’ – $644k – family (dropping 100k, 13% decline)
- ‘Let Him Go’ – $459k – western (dropping 300k, 41% decline)
- ‘Come Play’ – $389k – horror (dropping 200k, 36% decline)
The total for the weekend at the box office is $11.9 million, a gain of $8.1 million and a 213% increase over last weekends $3.8 million.
This may be the last decent weekend at the box office until next year. December releases are scarce with its biggest release, ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ set to debut on streaming service HBO Max the same day it hits theaters. How big of a dent that will make on its box office total will depend in part on what effects the ongoing Coronavirus global pandemic will have on the Christmas holiday. Many theaters remain closed and many more are hanging by a thread.
Aside from ‘Wonder Woman 1984’, the final big release of 2020 will be the Tom Hanks starring ‘News of the World’. It is expected to take the top spot on its debut weekend but as a western it’s in a genre that very rarely gets the big numbers at the box office. The previous movie starring Tom Hanks, the World War II naval film ‘Greyhound’, skipped theaters altogether and went straight to streaming on AppleTV.
The genre of westerns has been gaining traction over the last several years so ‘News of the World’ may yet surprise with a big box office return. To learn more about the western genre read the first installment of our article series What is Genre? Westerns