‘Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom’ Leads Christmas Box Office With $43 Million Domestically

The King of Atlantis returns to the big screen this weekend for the final outing in the DCEU. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom brings a close to the cinematic universe ahead of James Gunn and Peter Safran rebooting the franchise. The last entry marks a continuing trend of floundering at the box office.

The Friday total for the Jason Momoa-led sequel was around $13.7 million, with $4.5 million coming from Thursday showings. While the Hollywood Reporter points out that Christmas falling on a Monday provides trouble for the box office, Aquaman has even more problems. Outside the reported rocky road to getting the movie released, the reception has skewed negative this time, with just a B audience CinemaScore and a 37% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes.

The overall gross in the four-day weekend is on track for $40 to $45 million. While it isn’t quite as strong as its predecessor, which released around the same time in 2018 to an opening day alone of $27.7 million, it still puts the film on track to take the top spot for the holiday weekend. Warner Bros. also owns the silver this weekend in the form of Wonka. After taking home the gold last weekend, the musical origin of Willy Wonka looks to take home $30 million through the four-day weekend.

The third place for the weekend belongs to another new release, with Illumination providing some family quack-ups with Migration. The duck-centric animated feature took home about $5.8 million on its first day, according to Variety, falling short of the opening days for November’s animation excursions, Disney’s Wish and Dreamworks’ Trolls Band Together, both taking home $8.1 million and $9.3 million respectively.

Fourth goes to Anyone But You, and fifth to Salaar Part 1 Ceasefire.

The domestic box office chart, courtesy of Deadline:

1. Aquaman And The Lost Kingdom (WB) 3-Day $30M, 4-Day $43M/ Wk 1
2. Wonka (WB) 3-Day $18.8M, 4-Day $30M/ Total $87.4M/ Wk 2
3. Migration (Illumination/Universal) 3-Day $5.8M, 4-Day $18M/ Wk 1
4. Anyone But You (Sony) 3-Day $7M, 4-Day $9M/ Wk 1
5. Salaar Part 1 Ceasefire (Prath) 3-Day $6M, 4-Day $8.2M/ Wk 1
6. Iron Claw (A24) 3-Day $5.5M, 4-Day $7.8M/ Wk 1
7. Hunger Games: Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes (LG) 3-Day $3.5M, 4-Day $5.4M/ Total $154.8M/ Wk 6
8. Boy And The Heron (GKIDS) 3-Day $3.6M, 4-Day $4.1M, Total $31.5M/ Wk 3
9. Godzilla Minus One (Toho) 3-Day $2.75M, 4-Day $3.89M/ Total $41.4M/ Wk 4
10. Dunki (Yash Raj) 3-Day $2.6M, 4-Day $3.75M/ Total $4.6M/ Wk 1