The Twelve Days of Box Office: Day 11

By David Mumpower

January 2, 2015

We're going to war because we're tired of people saying we're ugly.

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New Year’s Day box office was tremendous across the board yesterday. Most of the films in the top 10 experienced daily increases of at least 40%. Virtually every title enjoyed its best day of box office since last Sunday. This is noteworthy, because one of the golden rules of daily box office is that Thursday is THE worst day of the week.

Since Thursday fell on a holiday, one that is especially great for inflating movie ticket sales, ordinary box office behavior was out the window. To wit, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies increased 56% from Wednesday, a remarkable feat. After all, The Hobbit VI (why only five armies for the sixth movie, Mr. Jackson?) already claimed the top spot at the North American box office. It should have a difficult time experiencing such dramatic growth, at least in theory.

In execution, the final Lord of the Rings project spiked from $6 million on New Year’s Eve to $9.3 million on New Year’s Day. This phenomenon exemplifies the underlying mechanics at play over the past eight days. Christmas Eve and New Year’s Eve are celebration days comprised of parties that prevent consumers from watching movies. Christmas Day and New Year’s Day operate differently. The historical data indicates that for whatever reason, people are much more likely to catch a flick on the actual holiday rather than the day before. It happens twice in late December (and January 1st) each year.




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Every time, people provide anecdotal data about how they celebrate differently. Ergo, everyone else must as well. And every time, the box office results demonstrate a stunning pattern of consistent box office fluctuation predicated upon calendar configuration of the holidays themselves. In the instance of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, it has grossed less than $7.5 million in a single day only twice thus far. The first time was Christmas Eve and the second time was New Year’s Eve. Its combined total of $12 million on those two days is beaten by its Christmas Day box office tally alone, $13.1 million.

There is a change in the top three once again. Unbroken temporarily unseated Into the Woods yesterday, but the positions have reversed. The Disney musical increased a massive 53% to $8.1 million, giving it a seven-day tally of $72.1 million. Unbroken gained “only” 18%, which speaks more to its unusual New Year’s Eve increase than anything else. Another $7 million yesterday gives it $69.5 million after a week in theaters. It has surpassed all but the most optimistic pre-release projections now.

The Twelve Days of Box Office will technically wind down Sunday and in fact has already ended for many as a lot of people went back to work today. Still, there will be at least one more summary column next week in addition to the standard Friday box office analysis and Weekend Wrap-Up. Until then, have a great weekend, my friends.


     


 
 

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