Box Office: 'Wonka' Unwraps Promising $3.5 Million Thursday

Warner Bros. Discovery's well-reviewed Timothée Chalamet-starring, Paul King-directed prequel is well-positioned for a $40 million-plus opening weekend

Timothée Chalamet and Hugh Grant in WB and Village Roadshow’s ‘Wonka’

Audiences are thus far flocking to the best sweets in London, so here’s hoping that Wiliam Wonka doesn’t secretly think they all deserve to die (tell you why, Oompa Loompa, tell you why). Sorry… since Wonka seems to be a year-end hit, you’re going to have to suffer through a lot of skewed Sweeney Todd references. As the kids say, *smash* that subscribe button!

Warner Bros. Discovery and Village Roadshow’s Wonka got off to a strong start on Thursday, earning $3.5 million in preview showings. No, that’s not a king’s ransom, but this isn’t the kind of movie that has a hardcore fanbase breathlessly waiting in line for the very first theatrical showings. Moreover, it’s a family-targeted feature, under two hours no less, which means a lot of casually interested folks with kids will just wait and see it at a weekend matinee.

With solid reviews (83% fresh and 7.3/10 on Rotten Tomatoes), decent word-of-mouth and whatever value the star+character hook of Timothée Chalamet *as* William J. Wonka (a W.I.L.F. no less) provides, there’s no reason to not be optimistic heading into the weekend.

A decade ago, when weekend moviegoing was less tilted toward advance-day showings (and when those showtimes started at 7 pm and not 3 pm), I’d argue that the Paul King-directed musical fantasy would earn as little as 5% of its opening weekend via the Thursday previews. Today, 10% would be just fine, thanks, which would give Wonka a $35 million Fri-Sun debut. That would be great for a mid-December family-friendly release, as December releases are almost always leggy as hell.

For those new here, the year-end holiday season has a scenario where films get two full weekday frames that act like proverbial weekends because most kids are out of school and a lot of adults are off work. That can benefit big blockbusters well-oved (Avatar: The Way of Water) and merely liked (The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey) mid-size biggies like Jumanji: The Next Level and Puss in Boots: The Last Wish and even smaller films like Jennifer Lopez’s Second Act (which earned $39 million domestic from a $6.8 million debut in 2018) and Sabrina (which legged out to $53 million from a $5.6 million opening in 1995).

That will certainly come up again when discussing the opening of Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom next weekend, but I digress. Wonka already had the buzz, the momentum and $43 million overseas heading into this general global launch. Hopes are that the $125 million Paul King-directed flick will earn around $80 million worldwide over the weekend, pushing it past (offhand) $125 million globally. Obviously, if it legs out over the weekend, attracting casually curious families on Saturday and Sunday afternoon, we could easily see a Thursday-to-weekend figure closer to Jumanji: The Next Level ($59 million from $4.7 million Thursday on this weekend in 2019), which would give Wonka a $44 million launch.

We’ll see how this plays out over the weekend, but it’s worth noting that my wife and middle son (the most pop culture-aware of my three kids) are both interested. And before we head into a weekend, this will be the first of many year-end reminders (as WBD releases Wonka, Aquaman 2 and The Color Purple in the space of ten days) that WB has actually been doing pretty well theatrically outside of those DC films. Maybe, as I warned in 2014 and then again in 2016, chasing a DC cinematic universe has done the Dream Factory more harm than good.

Because, in the end, the world didn’t need a Superman, they just needed a Barbie or a Wonka.