Box Office Breakdown for Weekend of 1/21/24

Movies

What’s up, Geeks + Gamers? It’s ODIN!

In my previous articles, I spent a lot of time breaking down the methodology of analyzing box office; now, it is time to break down the numbers. Here we go!

Mean Girls Remake Easily Beats Newcomer I.S.S.

According to “Tony” over on Deadline, the domestic box office for this weekend is down 8% from the same time last year. This is due not only to an incredibly weak opening for Bleecker Street’s newest film, I.S.S., but also what looks to be +60% drops for the musical remake of Mean Girls and the new Jason Statham action flick The Beekeeper… not to mention two holiday holdovers that continue to hold well each week in the family movie Wonka and the romantic comedy Anyone But You. Though Tony and others in the media might give too much credit to the writers’ and actors’ strikes from last year, the fact is that January has always been known as the month “where movies go to die.” Personally, it seems that the mainstream (shill) media is starting to prepare for what is likely to be yet another terrible year at the box office for the studios obsessed with overspending and a lack of quality content (not to mention inflation running rampant and regular families being more careful with how they spend their money).

According to the-numbers.com, the top 5 this weekend were:

1. Mean Girls: $11,700,000 (59% drop from last week)
2. The Beekeeper: $8,481,525 (49% drop)
3. Wonka: $6,440,262 (24% drop)
4. Anyone But You: $5,400,000 (24% drop)
5. Migration: $5,300,000 (15% drop)

Mean Girls (2023) vs Mean Girls (2004)

The first thing to note is that there is a lot of misleading coverage saying that the new Mean Girls is outpacing the box office of the original. When adjusted for inflation, the original Mean Girls still has a roughly $20 million advantage against the new one at the same point in its release. Using ticket sales as a metric, the 2004 film sold roughly 6.7 million tickets by the end of its second weekend, whereas the 2024 release has only sold about 3.8 million tickets. Either metric clearly indicates that millions of people in the domestic market have not shown the same interest in Tina Fey’s new musical iteration of “Plastics.” Though Mean Girls clearly won the weekend and had a decent second-weekend drop (59%), it is clear that the film is far from the success the original was. According to my charting, Mean Girls is expected to make between $95 million and $132 million worldwide and roughly $2.5 million and $25 million in net profit.

The Beekeeper’s Up and Down Update

The second thing to discuss is the Jason Statham action film The Beekeeper. There is still no verifiable information when it comes to the film’s estimated budget, which is likely well over $30 million. The one source that some are using indicating a $34 million budget is questionable and seems to lack any credibility. Assuming a budget of around $40 million would mean that, based on its first two weeks, the film will make between $4-$30 million in net profit. Though the budget could be a little less than indicated, and the week two drop-off was only 49% if The Beekeeper follows the typical historical trends, a best-case scenario would only be around $150 million globally. This is a correction from my previous reporting on my own channel, as the-numbers.com had not yet received the updated international numbers. Even with this much more optimistic update, however, the film is expected to be far from a massive hit for MGM.

No One Has Seen I.S.S. (2024)

The last thing to talk about for today is the incredibly weak opening for the only new wide release this week, I.S.S., which, due to its $13,800,000 production budget and single-digit opening, is not off to a great start. We will have a much better idea when we see the week two drop, but since the film opened out of the top 5 and lost against films that have been out since Christmas Day, things are not looking too great. Based on the reported budget, I.S.S. needs to make roughly $34,500,000 to break even, and for what should be a very easy number to hit even in the current box office environment, the chances of that happening are not very high.

For more box office numbers and analysis, check out the full chart over at my website. Stay tuned for more box office coverage soon! God bless!

(If you want further insight into my methodology, see my previous articles HERE and HERE.)