• by Wayne Friedman , December 17, 2023

Amid some recent lackluster theatrical movie results in the scripted/musical category, Warner Bros. Pictures’ “Wonka” posted a solid $39.0 million in its domestic pre-Christmas opening, according to Comscore.

Warner Bros. spent an average $17.1 million in national TV advertising for its entire pre-opening for the movie, according to EDO Ad EnGage, from 2,310 commercial airings yielding 1.7 billion impressions.

Many of these airings came on kids-targeted programming: Nickelodeon's “SpongeBob SquarePants” (64), Cartoon Network's “King of the Hill” (51), Adult Swim's “American Dad” (45); and Adult Swim's “Bob's Burgers” (42).

When it comes to overall spending, however, NFL football on CBS and Amazon Prime Video rang up the most ad revenue -- at $1.4 million and $1.2 million, respectively.

Looking at the broader box-office perspective, “Wonka” took in $53.6 million internationally to total $92.6 million globally.

In second place domestically was Lionsgate's “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” at $5.8 million in its fifth week of release.

Indie film “The Boy And The Heron,” from GKIDS, posted $5.2 million (second weekend), while Toho Intl’s “Godzilla Minus One” pulled in $4.9 million (third weekend).

For the end of-the-year holiday season, movie companies have spent $339.0 million in national TV advertising from 64,430 film advertising airings, according to EDO Ad EnGage, from September 1 through December 16. This is down 9% from the year-ago period when it was $373.6 million for 77,580 airings.

Year-to-date, the U.S/Canada box office is up 22% to $8.6 million over a year ago, according to Comscore.