THE WEEKEND WARRIOR Early Edition for December 6, 2024

Welcome to the Releasapocalypse! (Pat pending)

Welcome to what is essentially the craziest weekend in box office history, or at least in the 23 years I’ve been writing about box office, that’s for sure. That’s because historically, the weekend after Thanksgiving is kind of a dead one, and studios are hesitant to release movies, because they’re likely to get lost in the shuffle of the big November and Thanksgiving holiday hits. That last part is especially true this year, which begs the question: WHY ARE THERE SIX OR MORE OR MODERATE NEW RELEASES THIS WEEKEND??!?

I wish I were exaggerating, but there are a lot of movies seemingly being “dumped” this weekend to see if they can survive being thrown into the deep end and figure out how to swim. We have no less than FOUR horror (or horror-tangential, to quote my buddy Brett Arnold) movies, including one movie that’s been receiving praise from one fall festival, and another movie that received praise from another fall festival, and also one that premiered all the way back at SXSW in March. And yet all that Hollywood can offer this weekend might end up getting overshadowed by a movie from India where its Telugu-language releases have been kicking ass in recent years.

Can ANY of these movies break into the Top 5 against Wicked, Moana 2, and Gladiator II? Read on, paid subscribers, for this week’s absolutely bonkers box office analysis.