UPDATED: “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” has made it to the top of the box office charts, while “Mufasa: The Lion King” is being trampled on in its first weekend of release.

Paramount’s third “Sonic” adventure opened at No. 1 with $60 million from 3,761 North American theaters. Monday’s final number was below Sunday’s estimate of $62 million. However, supported by positive reviews and strong audience numbers, the film still landed at the high end of original expectations of $55 million to $60 million and looks set to remain a holiday hit in the new year. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” was aiming for a trilogy low opening, but instead opened above the original 2020 “Sonic the Hedgehog” ($58 million in February) and just below its 2022 sequel (best $72 million). -dollars of the series in March).

“As we saw the audience for this franchise grow, we saw a window in the market in December where we thought we could stand out,” says Chris Aronson, Paramount’s president of domestic distribution. “We succeeded. “Sonic” will dominate over the holidays.”

Disney’s “The Lion King” prequel “Mufasa” was in second place with $35 million from 4,100 theaters, falling well short of its pre-release expectations of $50 million. It’s a terrible start for a tentpole that cost over $200 million to produce and around $100 million to market worldwide. Despite mixed reviews, the film has several potential Savings, including a solid “A-” audience rating at CinemaScore and the fact that December releases aren’t known for delivering solid debuts. But if word of mouth is favorable, the film may last into January and beyond. (This was the case, for example, with last year’s prequel “Wonka,” directed by Timothee Chalamet, which opened with $39 million and ended with $218 million in North America and $634 million worldwide.) “Mufasa “ has a better chance of a breakthrough Although the family-friendly film was also not successful at the international box office, it grossed $87.2 million, giving it a worldwide opening of equates to $122.2 million.

“Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” which cost $122 million, won’t open at the international box office until Christmas. Jeff Fowler returned to direct the threequel, while Ben Schwartz returned to voice the title character, a fast blue creature with a knack for taking down bad guys, and Jim Carrey reprized his role as Sonic’s enemy Doctor Robotnik, a mad scientist obsessed with world domination. The story begins with Sonic and his friends Tails and Knuckles on their mission to stop a mysterious new enemy, Shadow the Hedgehog. The film received an “A” grade on CinemaScore and an 86% average on Rotten Tomatoes.

“Sonic” has established itself as a promising new film franchise for Paramount. The first two films grossed a combined $725 million at the global box office while driving consumer spending on home entertainment rentals and digital purchases to over $180 million. Based on the popular Sega video game series, the property also served as inspiration for Paramount+’s spin-off series Knuckles, which premiered earlier this year. A fourth film is now in development for 2027.

“Over the past five years, ‘Sonic’ has become a sought-after five-quadrant film: its audience includes younger and older women, younger and old men, and families,” says David A. Gross, who runs the film consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “The series does everything right.”

“Mufasa” could rebound over the holidays, or it could be the latest sign that audiences are tired of Disney’s live-action adaptations of animated classics. Remakes of “The Jungle Book,” “The Lion King,” “Beauty and the Beast” and “Aladdin” were huge commercial hits, while “Mulan,” “Dumbo” and “The Little Mermaid” either failed or failed in theaters fell short of expectations. Disney has two more remakes planned for 2025, “Snow White” in March and “Lilo & Stitch” in May, and live-action adaptations of “Moana” and “Tangled” are also in the works.

Barry Jenkins, the Oscar-winning filmmaker of “Moonlight” and “If Beale Street Could Talk,” directed “Mufasa,” with music by Lin-Manuel Miranda and the voice cast of Aaron Pierre and Kelvin Harrison Jr. as Mufasa and Scar, Donald Glover, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, Mads Mikkelsen and Blue Ivy Carter. It serves as a prequel to director Jon Favreau’s 2019 photorealistic remake “The Lion King,” which also received mixed reviews but delivered an impressive $191 million debut over the summer and ultimately debuted at a hefty #1 at the global box office. grossed $66 billion.

“Audiences like the film and the family entertainment has shown excellent staying power this year,” says Gross. “This story isn’t finished yet. This is a prequel story, and prequels start slower.”

Theater owners are hoping that’s the case, as total domestic ticket sales are 4.3% behind 2023 and 23% behind 2019, according to Comscore. The holiday season is looking less festive than usual, with adult-focused offerings like Searchlight’s Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown,” Focus Features’ “Nosferatu” remake and A24’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” as the only new arrivals Calendar for December 25th. Exhibitors typically rely on cross-audience offerings like “Avatar: The Way of Water” or “Spider-Man: No Way Home” to keep multiplexes reasonably full on one of the busiest movie days of the year.

This year, most of those four-quadrant films — including Universal’s “Wicked,” Disney’s “Moana 2” and Paramount’s “Gladiator II” — were released around Thanksgiving. All three also want to attract their audience during the Christmas season.

“Wicked” came in third with $13.5 million from 3,296 venues. The big-budget movie musical has grossed $383.91 million domestically and $571 million worldwide after five weekends of release. It finished just ahead of “Moana 2,” which grossed $13.1 million from 3,600 theaters in its fourth weekend in theaters. The Polynesian animated adventure has so far grossed $359 million in North America and a whopping $790 million worldwide. It is expected to be Disney’s third film to cross the $1 billion mark this year.

“Gladiator II” fell to No. 6 with $4.45 million from 2,397 theaters, bringing its domestic tally to $153 million. Ridley Scott’s follow-up to “Gladiator,” 25 years in the making, has grossed $416.2 million at the global box office, which is great for theater operators but less so for Paramount considering the sword-and-sandal sequel a great success has a proud price of 250 million US dollars.

Sony’s “Kraven the Hunter,” a superhero spinoff starring Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Spider-Man’s infamous foe, plunged to seventh place with $3.1 million in its second weekend of release, a tragic 72% loss from its previous gross Just under 11 million US dollars corresponds to debut. So far, the film has grossed just $17.4 million domestically and $42 million worldwide on a budget of $110 million.

In limited release, A24’s historical epic “The Brutalist” opened with $266,791 across four screens – which works out to a whopping $66,698 per location. According to the indie studio, the majority of the opening audience were under 35, while nearly half of them came from the Oscar nominee via Letterboxd, a social media platform where users rate, review and discuss all things cinema learned. Brady Corbet directed the three-hour, 30-minute film (including an intermission), which will play in select theaters in New York and Los Angeles before opening nationwide in January.