Wonka Lays A Little Golden Egg With $39 Million Opening Weekend
Update 12/18/2023: Per Variety, "Wonka" ended up ahead of expectations with a domestic opening weekend of $39 million. The headline has been updated to reflect this. Original article follows.
More than half a century after Gene Wilder charmed and terrified children in equal measure in "Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory," it's Timothée Chalamet's turn to cook up sweet and improbable treats in "Wonka," a musical prequel from "Paddington"/"Paddington 2" director Paul King. Musicals are always a risky bet at the box office, but by downplaying the singing and dancing and focusing trailers around its quirky leading man, "Wonka" has achieved a good (if not necessarily grand) opening.
Per The Hollywood Reporter, "Wonka" is on track to gross $38 million or more at the domestic box office in its opening weekend, following an opening day gross of $14.4 million. The film has a relatively conservative budget of $125 million, so it needs at least $300 million worldwide by the end of its run to comfortably break even and start turning a profit. That's easily doable, especially looking at King's track record. The first "Paddington" movie made $18 million at the North American box office in its opening weekend, and ended up grossing over $282 million worldwide. $64.9 million of that gross came from the U.K., Paddington's new home after his perilous journey from Darkest Peru.
Though the original source material for "Wonka" is British author Roald Dahl's book "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory," the Americanization of the 1971 adaptation and this prequel means it may not have the same hold over the British public. However, any disadvantage in that respect will be offset by "Wonka" being well-placed to compete at the Christmas box office next weekend. It's perfectly pitched to families (not to mention fans of chocolate).
How far can pure imagination take Wonka at the box office?
It's impossible to talk about holiday window musicals featuring a charming leading man with colorful fashion choices without talking about "The Greatest Showman." Starring Hugh Jackman as real-life showman P.T. Barnum, the film received mixed reviews from critics and had a meager opening weekend of just $8.8 million. But audience exit polling from CinemaScore gave it an A grade, and "The Greatest Showman" ended up playing in theaters for almost six months and grossing a staggering $434.9 million worldwide. General audiences can be reticent about musicals, but the right one can go a long way, and a "Greatest Showman"-like performance is the best case scenario.
In terms of competition over the holiday frame, "Wonka" will be up against Illumination's animated family comedy/adventure "Migration," but awareness of that film generally seems to be pretty low. Next weekend will also see Willy Wonka challenged by the king of Atlantis himself when "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" rises to the surface. Per Deadline, the superhero sequel was tracking for a $50-60 million four-day opening weekend at the end of November.
Positive word of mouth could give "Wonka" the edge here. The film has a score of 84% on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing, and received an A- CinemaScore from opening day audiences. There's also the fact that every DC superhero movie released so far this year (almost every superhero movie across the board, in fact) has bombed, so superhero fatigue could drag "Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom" down. Then again, it does have a drumming octopus.