Box Office: 'Sonic 3' Races to $6.5 Million Thursday as 'Mufasa' Starts Slow With $3.3 Million In Preview Grosses

'Sonic the Hedgehog 3' should be a bonafide instant smash, but the commercial narrative for Barry Jenkins' 'Lion King' prequel may take a week or two to take shape.

I have long argued that the pre-Christmas weekend is the best slot to open a film. As a general rule, films, big (The Fellowship of the Ring) and small (Mouse Trap), trade comparatively smaller opening weekends (which, as we saw with King Kong and Avatar: The Way of Water, can lead to some frankly ignorant opening weekend hand-wringing) for potentially absurd post-debut legs. With two weeks when most kids are out of school, and many adults have at least a few days off from work amid Christmas and New Year's, the films opening on this weekend get essentially two whole weeks where the weekdays play like weekends. Among many examples, Aquaman can leg out to $335 million domestically from a $72 million debut in 2018, while Sisters can gross $87 million domestically from a $13.5 million debut in 2015.

And even when big films like Disney and Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Force Awakens or Sony and Marvel’s Spider-Man: No Way Home score “huge for any weekend” launches, they still tend to be leggier (3.9x $248 million in 2015 and 3.1x $260 million in 2021) than what might have been expected at essentially any other time of the year. We’ve got two major kid-targeted franchise flicks opening days before Christmas. One is on a path to score a “good enough for any weekend” debut regarding budget and expectations, while the other will depend on (to paraphrase Axel Rose) the long December legs. Paramount and Sega’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (review) nabbed $6.5 million in Thursday previews. At the same time, Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King (review) began what hopefully will be a box office marathon (not a sprint) with $3.3 million.