After a disappointing opening week, Walt Disney's animated movie “Mufasa: The Lion King” in a rare theatrical move for big wide-release film recovered its animal strength in its second week of release, increasing its box-office revenues by 5% in its second week of release to $37 million.
It has now amassed $113.5 million domestically and $328 million globally, according to Comscore.
For the U.S. and Canada, the theatrical movie business has done well in making up ground over the last month. Through November 24, it was down 10.6% for the year. In mid-June, the business was down 28% compared to a year ago.
This comes as major movie studio marketing in terms of national TV advertising spending is down substantially 24% from a year before to $936 million (199,820 airings and 113.7 billion impressions), according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage -- compared to $1.24 billion (281,100 airings and 153.5 billion impressions).
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Total engagement volume -- in terms of the increase in activity in the minutes following a national TV movie advertisement -- is down 27% to 354,900.
The main big-screen competitor for "Mufasa," Paramount Pictures' "Sonic The Hedgehog 3" -- also in its second week of release -- kept pace, adding a similar $38 million. Its domestic take is now $137.5 million domestically -- down a modest 37% from its first week ($62 million).
"Sonic" is behind "Mufasa" globally, tallying only $211.5 million globally.
With just one day remaining until the end of the year, domestic box office revenue is down just 3.5% to $8.7 billion from a year ago.