So much shifting and multiple films joining select lists of infamy this week, just before Christmas break and all the Avatar fans run en masse to movie theaters. A film reclaimed victory. Another jumped up a whole five spots on the chart. The first film in 15 years from an honest-to-God legend in film and television was dismissed outright by audiences and critics. But, hey, that didn’t stop a certain film from adding a billion dollars to the global box office in less than three weeks.
King of the Crop: Zootopia 2 Becomes Highest-Grossing American Film of the Year
Disney’s Zootopia 2 reclaimed the No. 1 spot this week with $26.3 million. That’s practically chump change since the biggest story is the film passing a billion dollars around the globe on Friday to become the biggest U.S. release of the year, passing Lilo & Stitch’s $1.038 billion. It has taken just 19 days for the sequel to make $1.13 billion, $258.9 million of which was made on the domestic side. That translates to $877.7 million in overseas money, the 19th-best total of all time, as it carves out a path to be just the 14th film ever to hit a billion alone outside the U.S. It also had the seventh-best third weekend ever for a November release. Even if the numbers are running rather parallel to Shrek the Third, which finished with $322 million, the upcoming holiday season should preserve the audience fairly well and propel that even further to the $360-380 million we mapped out for it last week.
Rotten Returns: Ella McCay Suffers Dismal Opening
As a James L. Brooks fan (and I make no apologies for that), it brings me no joy to report the numbers on his first film in 15 years. Not that the numbers for his last feature, How Do You Know? with Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson, were great (31% with critics, a $7.4 million opening, a $30.2 million domestic gross, on a reported $120 million budget), but they look like Avatar figures compared to Ella McCay. First off, apart from myself and a few of my trusted colleagues and friends in Chicago, reviews have been bad. The film sits at 22% on the Tomatometer through the weekend. But apart from people doing the Ella McCay challenge with their shoes, interest was already way down before the reviews even hit. That came to fruition this weekend with just a $2.1 million start for the $35 million-budgeted film. That puts it among the worst December openings ever for a film in over 2,000 theaters:
Delgo (2,160 theaters – $511,920)
PLAYMOBIL: The Movie (2337 theaters – $656,530)
A Journal for Jordan (2500 theaters – $1.04 million)
The Fire Inside (2006 theaters – $1.95 million)
Ella McCay (2500 theaters – $2.10 million)
Nightmare Alley (2145 theaters – $2.48 million)
The Darkest Hour (2324 theaters – $2.99 million)
Just Getting Started (2161 theaters – $3.20 million)
Father Figures (2902 theaters – $3.28 million)Rumor Has It (2815 theaters – $3.47 million)
Tales of the top 10: Five Nights at Freddy’s Drops Hard, Wicked: For Good Reaches for $500 Million
There have been 15 movies that have ever dropped 69% or higher in their second weekend and grossed over $100 million. It’s a dubious little statistic, given that they would not have achieved that without big solid first week tallies. Two of them occurred this year: Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle and The Conjuring: Last Rites. Here is the full list:
Five Nights at Freddy’s (-76.2% = $137.2 million)
Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle (-75.5% – $134.3 million)
Fifty Shades of Grey ($-73.8% = $166.1 million)
The Flash (-72.5% – $108.1 million)
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($381.0 million)
Valentine’s Day (-70.4% = $110.4 million)
The Twilight Saga: New Moon (-70.0% = $296.6 million)
Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (-69.9% = $214.5 million)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 (-69.8% = $281.2 million)
Hulk (-69.7% = $132.1 million)
The Conjuring: Last Rites (-69.5% = $177.7 million)
The Fault In Our Stars (-69.2% = $124.8 million)
Batman vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice (-69.1% = $330.3 million)
The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 (-69.1% = $292.3 million)
X-Men Origins: Wolverine (-69.0% = $179.8 million)
Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 is about to join the ranks, marking the third time this year it has happened. It hasn’t quite reached $100 million yet, but it will get there within the week. A 70% drop to $19.5 million this weekend brings it to $95.4 million. The film is in some unchartered territory after contributing to the biggest first weekend ever in December, so we look elsewhere for comparisons, as who knows if the holiday traffic will stave off the clear drop-off? Terminator 3 fell to $19.4 million in its second weekend with a 10-day total of $96.8 million. Maybe a better charting would be M. Night Shyamalan’s The Last Airbender falling to $16.6 million in weekend two with a total of $95 million. T3 got itself to $150 million. The Last Airbender just got over $131 million.
The first Freddy’s dropped to just over $19 million but already had $113.2 million. The sequel may be setting up for a finish between $130-140 million domestic with a shot to actually outgross the original. Imagine that. Exclusively in theaters. Not on streaming at the same time. Globally the film is over $173 million already. Freddy’s 2 clearly won out, but let’s give it up for the IMAX re-release of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining making $1.56 million in 400 theaters and sliding into 10th place. Audiences chose that in greater numbers (and ticket prices) over another ‘80s remake which failed to make the top 10. More on that in a moment. Speaking of horror, though, Ron Howard’s How The Grinch Stole Christmas with Jim Carrey got a 25th Anniversary re-release this weekend and it made $1.85 million, enough to secure an eighth-place finish.
Meanwhile, Wicked: For Good is fully on The Twilight Saga path in terms of how it has been dropping from week to week. Among the top-grossing films in November (with which For Good clearly keeps company) only five of the top 30 have had a fourth weekend fall under $10 million. Justice League, Harry Potter Deathly Hallows Part I, Twilight: New Moon, and the two Breaking Dawns. Wicked: For Good has already outgrossed all of those films, period. But the follow-up out of the gate suggests that the word is out and repeat business is just not there. Another $8.55 million in weekend four brings its total to $312.1 million. That path puts its domestic destination between $330-340 million, which would make it the seventh or eighth highest-grossing November release ever. Worldwide the film is over $468 million and will hit a half billion, but it is a significant decrease from the $758 million of Part One.
The top 10 again had not one, but two non-English films this week. Last week Dhurandhar snuck onto the list in ninth place with $1.9 million. This week the film increased its business by 60% to $3.5 million in just 400 theaters, and it has now made $7.8 million and is the highest-grossing Hindi film of 2025. GKids had one of their biggest openings last week ($10.06 million) with Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution. Their second best, actually, with their second-biggest launch (1,833 theaters). This week the anime series extension fell 79% to $2.102 million, bringing its total to $14.5 million.
Inching its way towards the $60 million territory we’ve had it plotted for weeks is Now You See Me: Now You Don’t. Another $2.38 million in its fifth weekend puts it over $59 million domestic and $215 million worldwide. It is still far off from its predecessors’ $351 million and $334 million global hauls. This one should still be a minor profit for Lionsgate and likely a good time to close the door. If only they hadn’t let the Knives Out series get away to Netflix. They could have had two more big hits on their hands, and Rian Johnson would have had his films released in theaters for longer than a week.
Eternity had the best hold in the top 10 last week. It never finished higher than sixth on the charts; it fell to seventh last week. Now its holding on in ninth with $1.77 million for a total of $12.9 million. A24’s biggest hit of the year was Celine Song’s romantic triangle Materialists, which was just their third film to globally pass $100 million along with last year’s Civil War and their Oscar-winning Everything Everywhere All At Once. They are hoping that their awards favorite this year, Marty Supreme, opening on Christmas, could be their fourth.
Beyond the Top 10: Silent Night, Deadly Night Debuts in 12th
Focus did not expand Hamnet much further this week. Just three more theaters for 749 total. Awards season is in full swing and Chloe Zhao’s film is in the running right now for Best Picture, Director, Actress (Jessie Buckley), and Adapted Screenplay, among others. It made another $1.5 million, falling just behind The Shining and missing out on a top 10 finish, and has made $7 million to date.
The original Silent Night, Deadly Night was a controversial little film back in 1984. Parents railed against the idea of using Santa Claus imagery advertising the slasher film (not that it was the first to do so). Siskel & Ebert even joined the outcry. 41 years later, the general outline of the films returns in a new remake, though with more of a Frailty/Dexter-like mentality, with the star of Halloween Ends (Rohan Campbell) again in the role of the unfortunate kid in the wrong place/time who becomes infected with the essence of a serial killer. Cineverse (formerly Cinedigm), who gave us the releases of the Terrifier sequels, this year’s Toxic Avenger remake, and January’s upcoming Return to Silent Hill, is also out front for this. It made just $1.12 million. The original opened to $1.43 million in 398 theaters and went on to gross nearly $2.5 million while spawning a series of direct-to-video sequels.
Predator: Badlands made another million, bringing its total just over $90 million domestic. The franchise leader has made $182 million worldwide, and for the third year in a row, a November release opening to over $40 million failed to reach $100 million domestic after The Marvels (2023) and Red One (2024).
On the Vine: James Cameron Returns to Pandora in Avatar: Fire and Ash
James Cameron is at it again, taking audiences back to the world of Pandora with Avatar: Fire and Ash. Is this going to be another two-billion-dollar blockbuster, or will any wear and tear start to show in this universe? For another kind of animation under the sea, Paramount has The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants, and Angel Studios has the story of David (of Goliath fame). Sydney Sweeney and Amanda Seyfried battle it out in Paul Feig’s The Housemaid. Then in limited release, Searchlight has Bradley Cooper’s latest directorial effort, Is This Thing On?, with Will Arnett and Laura Dern.
Full List of Box Office Results: December 12-14, 2025
- Zootopia 2 – $26.3 million ($258.9 million total)
- Five Nights At Freddy’s 2 – $19.5 million ($95.4 million total)
- Wicked: For Good – $8.55 million ($312.1 million total)
- Dhurandhar – $3.5 million ($7.8 million total)
- Now You See Me: Now You Don’t – $2.38 million ($59.3 million total)
- Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution – $2.102 million ($14.5 million total)
- Ella McCay – $2.1 million ($2.1 million total)
- How the Grinch Stole Christmas (25th Anniversary re-release) – $1.85 million ($1.85 million total)
- Eternity – $1.77 million ($12.9 million total)
- The Shining – $1.56 million ($1.56 million total)
Erik Childress can be heard each week evaluating box office on Business First AM with Angela Miles and his Movie Madness Podcast. [box office figures via Box Office Mojo]
Thumbnail image by ©Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures
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