Thursday Box Office: 'Aquaman 2' Earns Just $4.5 Million While 'Migration' Nabs $1.5 Million

In yet another sign of which film really rules the holidays, 'Wonka' was nearly the top draw with $4.2 million on day seven

Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom earned just $4.5 million in Thursday's preview showings, which is exactly half of what the first Aquaman earned in its pre-release showings on this same weekend in 2018. That film, including earlier previews, ended up with a $33 million Friday and a $72 million opening weekend. Does that simply mean that the second Jason Momoa-starring underseas adventure is going to earn $14 million on Friday and $36 million for the Fri-Sun weekend?

Well… reviews are pretty bad (36% rotten with a 4.8/10 on Rotten Tomatoes), and there obviously isn’t going to be the kind of buzz that greeted the first installment five years ago. I mean, I enjoyed the film on its own limited terms. It looked great in Imax 3-D and there’s plenty of James Wan’s kitchen sink scary/fantastical sensibilities amid the clearly compromised screenplay. However, as we’ve seen with The Marvels and Shazam: Fury of the Gods, merely being okay isn’t quite enough for a DC/Marvel superhero movie.

Yes, we’ve got the December legs factor, and the first Aquaman was the leggiest live-action DC/Marvel movie ($335 million from $72 million debut) since Tim Burton’s Batman in 1989. But when it comes to big-deal December releases, even as they usually trade bigger openings for longer legs, the likes of I Am Legend, Rogue One, Tron: Legacy and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug earned 3.3-3.9x their respective debuts. If Aquaman 2 really does open below $40 million, then well… will WBD be that thrilled with a $115-$150 million (lots of wiggle room) domestic finish?

Okay, in this environment, anything close to $150 million would be a measured win, as Wonka is overperforming and we’re obviously not getting an Aquaman 3 anyway. That’s a shame since I liked where the second film left us, but I digress. And it’s possible that a lack of fan-driven excitement means that audiences will be more likely to casually waltz into theaters amid the proper weekend, especially as the film works as a kid-friendly matinee offering. Could it leg out just by virtue of being the unofficial year-end, Imax-worthy fantasy tentpole flick?

But I’m probably grasping at straws here. I mean, it’s just as likely that — with WB putting its momentum behind Wonka and The Color Purple (opening Monday amid strong reviews) — Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom opens with $36 million and pulls a multiplier closer to The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker (around 2.9x with much, much larger opening weekends) and barely tops $100 million domestic.

And for those wondering about China, where the first film earned a record (for a non-Avengers superhero movie) $298 million gross, well… $13.5 million in its first three days. As those who’ve been doing the reading know, China is no longer the place for Hollywood tentpoles to get an extra bit of juice. That has been the case, give or take a few exceptions (Godzilla Vs. Kong, Free Guy, etc.), since 2020. Even Avatar: The Way of Water ($246 million) earned around 1/2, if not 1/3, of what might have been expected in pre-Covid times. Whatever Aquaman 2 does or doesn’t do at the global box office, it’ll have to do it without much help from China.

Illumination’s Migration earned $1.6 million in Thursday previews. For what it’s worth, that’s on par with the $1.7 million earned via Tuesday previews in December of 2016 by Sing, which was Illumination’s last wholly original animated theatrical. The buzz has been pretty quiet even if the reviews (69% fresh and 6.3/10 on Rotten Tomatoes) are solid. Offhand, it’s a beautifully animated caper that often plays like a (kid-friendly and not especially scary) horror movie, with our family of migrating ducks running into one life-or-death circumstance after another. Universal is counting on casual family audiences getting around to it over the next two weeks, as well as the lack of *new* theatrical toons between now and Kung Fu Panda 4 in March.

Sony debuted Columbia’s Anyone But You with $1.2 million in Thursday previews. The Glen Powell/Sydney Sweeney rom-com is — no pleasure in saying this as a Will Gluck fan — one of the worst movies of the year. Like Disney’s Wish, it presents the bare elements for its respective genre but never bothers to cook or season them, expecting us to be happy that the elements are merely present in the abstract. That said, it’s a $25 million production, which was co-financed with SK Global Entertainment and TSG Entertainment, so I imagine all parties will be okay. But as rom-coms are the one genre where Netflix has consistently delivered on par with the Hollywood variety, Hollywood needs to offer more than this as a counter.

A24 is releasing Sean Durkin’s The Iron Claw this weekend as well, and that’s not even counting wide expansions for Searchlight’s Poor Things and Amazon MGM’s American Fiction (two of the best comedies of the year, natch). The Iron Claw, which earned $670,000 yesterday, is such a “feel-bad movie of Christmas” that I kept waiting for Rooney Mara (The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, Lion, Carol, Women Talking) to show up. That said, the Zac Efron-starring wrestling biopic/family melodrama is A) pretty damn good and B) exactly the kind of movie that some folks of certain political persuasions claim Hollywood never makes anyway (I mean that as a compliment, natch). So if it slightly overperforms this weekend — relative to budget and expectations — that will be partially why.

Finally, Wonka earned $4.2 million yesterday to bring its week-long domestic total to $57.5 million. It’s very likely that the Timothée Chalamet-led musical prequel will be the top flick this pre-Christmas weekend. That both Wonka and Aquaman 2 come from Warner Bros. Discovery will probably make the medicine go down in a slightly more delightful way.