Friday Box Office: Why 'Sonic 3' Is Running Rings Around 'Mufasa'
Paramount's well-liked sequel within a new(er) franchise versus Disney's corporate-mandated prequel origin story to a circumstantial, nostalgia-targeted smash.
Even in a year when Disney’s follow-ups to much-liked predecessors from their (or Fox’s) 2010s line-up have ruled the theatrical marketplace, it says something that a Paramount-distributed video game adaptation is just pancaking a Disney-distributed follow-up to one of the Mouse House’s biggest-grossing movies. The Lion King earned $544 million in North America and $1.66 billion worldwide, making it currently the 18th biggest domestic earner of all time (sans inflation). It ended the 2010s as the 11th biggest grosser, with three of the next seven all-time champions (Deadpool & Wolverine, Inside Out 2 and Avatar: The Way of Water) coming from Disney. Globally, it ended the decade as the seventh biggest worldwide earner, now ranking tenth thanks to those same three Disney releases.
Whether you want to count it as a “photorealistic” live-action movie or an animated flick, The Lion King is the top-earning straight-up musical ever in global earnings. It is either Disney’s biggest non-Star Wars and MCU live-action earner or the second-biggest animated film behind this summer’s Inside Out 2. The follow-up to that movie, directed by one of the industry’s best currently working indie filmmakers, is about to be lapped – at least in North America – by a $122 million threequel to a kid-focused talking hedgehog action comedy based on a 30-year-old Sega video game. Fun fact: The two previous Sonic the Hedgehog films earned $340 million domestically and $725 million worldwide combined, which is less than half of The Lion King’s global cume.
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 versus Mufasa: The Lion King is an example of “IP that audiences actively want to see” versus “IP that exists because it looks good to shareholders and is theoretically appealing to moviegoers.” Just two years ago, Matrix Resurrections ($157 million, or less than half of what Dune earned and 1/3 of Godzilla Vs. Kong’s global total despite also getting the “Project Popcorn” treatment) got crushed by Sing 2 ($405 million despite debuting on PVOD after day 17). That was partially because present-day audiences liked Sing, while The Matrix hadn’t been popular since 2003. It’s not a one-to-one comparison, but one film debuted with $25.75 million on Friday, or almost double its respective competition’s $13.3 million opening day.