‘The Color Purple’ Wins Christmas Day With $18M+ & A CinemaScore As Warner Bros Dominates Holiday Box Office

https://deadline.com/2023/12/box-office-aquaman-and-the-lost-kingdom-migration-color-purple-1235680766/

Warner Bros –as mostly expected– wound up owning Christmas with its trifecta of Aquaman 2, Wonka and The Color Purple respectively in the top three spots. Speaking of The Color Purple, it came up big — much bigger than expected on its first day with an estimated $18.15M, A CinemaScore, 5 stars and 92% positive.

Not only was that haul enough for Color Purple to win Christmas Day ahead of Aquaman 2 ($10.6M) and Wonka ($10.3M), but it’s the biggest Christmas Day opening since 2009, and the second biggest Christmas Day opening after Warner Bros’ 2009 Sherlock Holmes ($24.6M). Color Purple also outstrips the first Christmas day of Universal’s feature take on West End/Broadway musical Les Miserables which went on to ultimately make $148.8M. Are musicals dead on the big screen? Absolutely not, they just need to be excellent.

Diversity demos on the Oprah Winfrey-Steven Spielberg produced Color Purple were 65% Black, 19% Caucasian, 11% Hispanic and Latino and 2% Asian. We always knew presales were big, especially in the South, with projections for Christmas Day raising from $8M to $10M-$12M. But yesterday was amazing.