• by Wayne Friedman , January 20, 2025

Three weeks into the new year, the theatrical movie business is on par with expectations -- with modest box-office revenue and weak national TV ad spend in support of those films.

For the most recent weekend (January 17-19), the debut of Sony Pictures’ adult-skewing film “One of Them Days” eked out a modest weekend victory -- with $11.6 million in box-office results, according to Comscore.

It narrowly beat out Walt Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King” at $11.53 million. The movie, now at week five of release, totals $205.8 million in domestic revenue. Paramount’s “Sonic: The Hedgehog 3” -- also five weeks out -- reached $8.6 million, in fourth place, with a total of $216.5 million domestically.

Universal Pictures’ “Wolf Man,” in its debut, came in at third place -- at $10.5 million.

For this time of year, these individual movie results are always expected -- especially after a highly targeted holiday movie period.

Year-to-date, theatrical movies are now up 8% in box-office revenue to $395.9 million.

This comes from the studios' collective marketing efforts -- totaling $47.2 million so far in national TV advertising spend for films year-to-date -- from 8,780 airings producing 6 billion impressions, according to EDO Ad EnGage.

Sony spent a very modest $4.54 million for the debut of “One of Them Days”.

Moving later into the season -- with bigger franchise titles to come -- Walt Disney’s “Captain America: Brave New World” will debut on February 14.

With a month to go, Disney has already spent $9 million in TV advertising.

For this past week’s launch of “Wolf Man”, Universal has spent $11.3 million. Next week’s start of Lionsgate Films “Flight Risk” is at $7.0 million.