And the winner of the Nosferatu, Babygirl, and A Complete Unknown Christmas release triad is… Mufasa: The Lion King, a film that's also in theaters this weekend. It seems like every parent in the country has already taken their kids to see Moana 2 (it's now one of the 50 highest-grossing sequels of any genre), and they certainly weren't going to Babygirl, so Mufasa's reign isn't all that surprising on paper. What is surprising is that it managed to overtake Sonic The Hedgehog 3, which absolutely trampled it (sorry) last weekend. Mufasa made $15 million to Sonic's $10.7 million yesterday, a very different ratio than Mufasa's $35 million to Sonic's $60 million for both film's openings last weekend (via The Hollywood Reporter). Overall a very good day for Blue Ivy Carter, who does voicework for the Lion King prequel and got to perform with her mom (Beyoncé, of course) during Netflix's Christmas halftime show.
Even though it didn't win the day, Nosferatu still managed to suck a decent amount of cash from its audience's pockets. The Robert Eggers opus opened yesterday with $11.6 million, which THR projects into a five-day total of up to $40 million by Sunday. That's well ahead of expectations, which the trade reports were closer to $20 million. It seems like obscuring the details of Bill Skarsgård's vampiric visage from the promo really did work.
The other two films in the trio (A Complete Babyratu? A Nosfergirl Unknown? Maybe that one has run its course) also did well against their projections. A Complete Unknown, the Timothée Chalamet-led Bob Dylan biopic, brought in $7.2 million for a projected five-day total of $22 million, while the Nicole Kidman BDSM thriller, Babygirl, brought in $1.7 million for a projected total of around $7 million. These are only projections, of course, and these numbers could change drastically over the course of the weekend. Still, it was clearly a holly jolly day at the movies.
