‘Wonka’ Earns a Sweet $39 Million Domestic, $151 Million Global Box Office Opening

Warner Bros.’ family musical is hoping to leg out through the Christmas season with strong audience reception

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Timothee Chalamet in "Wonka" (Warner Bros.)

Warner Bros.’ “Wonka” is off to a good start at the box office, grossing $39 million from 4,203 theaters and earning positive word-of-mouth from critics and audiences, as it looks to leg out through the holidays and into January.

“Wonka” will need legs as it sports a reported $125 million budget before marketing costs. Combined with $112.4 million grossed from overseas markets over the past two weekends, “Wonka” has a running global total of $151 million.

Prior to the pandemic, musicals like “The Greatest Showman” and “Mary Poppins Returns” were able to pull off long-lasting runs during the holidays, posting openings well south of $40 million yet going on to top $170 million in domestic grosses.

Gen Z has been the difference maker for “Wonka,” as 33% of the film’s opening weekend crowd came from the 18-24 demo, showing Timothée Chalamet’s draw among younger audiences.

As the 2023 box office has shown with films like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” big-budget films don’t have much hope for success without a buy-in from Gen Z. If “Wonka” continues with strong holds week to week, Chalamet’s status as a generational draw will only grow — something that Warner Bros. is banking on when “Dune: Part Two” starring Chalamet comes out in March.

“Wonka” will face some family competition next weekend from Illumination’s “Migration,” the duck animated film which is getting a no-holds-barred marketing campaign from Universal. But Paul King and Timothée Chalamet’s “Wonka” is getting strong reception, with Rotten Tomatoes scores of 84% critics and 91% audience, an A- on CinemaScore — same as “Mary Poppins Returns” — and PostTrak scores of 4.5/5 from kids and general audiences and 5/5 from parents.

In second is Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” with $5.8 million in its fifth weekend. With this result, the “Hunger Games” prequel has crossed $300 million worldwide against a reported $100 million budget.

In third is GKIDS/Studio Ghibli’s “The Boy and the Heron,” with $5.1 million in its second weekend. While that’s a second-weekend drop of around 59%, it’s substantially better than the frontloaded performance that usually comes from franchise anime films. That’s also enough to push the film past $100 million in global grosses, with its $23 million U.S. total being the highest for a Hayao Miyazaki film before inflation adjustment.

Toho/Emick Media’s “Godzilla Minus One” is in fourth with $4.8 million in its third weekend. With $34.2 million in the U.S., the film ranks among the top 10 highest grossing non-English films in history, before inflation.

Farther down the charts, Fathom Events and Angel Studios released “Christmas With The Chosen: Holy Night,” a sequel to the successful “Christmas With The Chosen” theatrical special for Angel Studios’ hit Christian streaming series, “The Chosen.” “Holy Night” grossed $2.9 million this weekend.

This has been a record year for Fathom, as it is on course to cross $100 million in annual totals for the first time in company history. Partnerships with studios like Angel Studios and GKIDS have allowed Fathom to expand its reach with audiences, while theaters have shown increased interest in event screenings to fill in the gaps left behind by the strike-affected major studio release slate.

Next weekend will see a slew of films hit theaters in limited and wide release, first on Friday and then on Christmas Day the following Monday. Friday releases include Universal/Illumination’s “Migration,” Warner Bros./DC’s “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom,” Searchlight’s “All of Us Strangers” and A24’s “The Iron Claw.” Christmas Day releases include Warner Bros.’ “The Color Purple” and Neon’s “Ferrari.”

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