US week-end Box Office analysis: December 27-29

Box Office analysis for the week of December 30th.  Monday at sundown marks the end of this year's eight days of Hanukkah, followed by New Year's Eve on Tuesday and New Year's Day on Wednesday.  Reasons to celebrate abound.

Disney's Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker had a solid second week of ticket sales, $72M for the weekend and a 10-day cume of $361.8M in North America and $724.8M Worldwide.  Sony's Jumanji: The Next Level continued to draw large holiday audiences, delivering $35.3M this weekend and $175.5M in its three weeks in theaters. Sony's Little Women opened on over 3300 screens on Christmas Day and grossed a neat $16.5M.  Bravo to Sony and director Greta Gerwig for this excellent performance.  Universal's 1917 opened in 11 locations on Christmas and earned $570,000, making a fantastic Per-Theatre-Average of $52,489.

Our Industry News begins with more rumblings from exhibitors about the decision by the US Department of Justice to allow the Paramount Consent Decree to lapse over the next two years. Exhibitors worry that by lifting the restrictions defined in the Decree studios will exert even greater influence on the terms for when and where their films are played, sometimes at the expense of exhibitors.  We highlight the Hollywood Reporter's Director Roundtable interviews. In this annual feature, leading directors active in Hollywood give their perspective on industry developments. A big topic among the group was the change to film making and distribution due to the influence of Netflix and other streaming services. We conclude with the New York Times' run-down of the leading contenders for Best Actor in this year's awards season. 

In The Hollywood Report, Martin Grove discusses the uncertain results from recent reboots, remakes and sequels from the major studios. While some have performed, overall results have been decidely mixed and studios can no longer count on these follow-on films to be low-risk/high-return propositions. The Gower Street Rolling 8-Week Forecast now extends through the week of February 14th, Valentine's week. It predicts February film openings to support robust results at the box office, based in large part on the wide variety of titles with appeal to many audiences.

We conclude with our regular film data and tables: the Weekly Film Calendar covering releases over the next six weeks, recently announced Studio Release Changes, the latest MPAA film ratings and a list of important new trailers released last week.