Disney’s Mufasa: The Lion King has its toil cut out for it.
As it stands now, Paramount’s Sonic the Hedgehog 3 is tracking to uncover to $55 million over the Dec. 20-22 weekend, evaluated to $50 million for Mufasa: The Lion King, according to sources with access to data from directing research firm National Research Group.
It would be an distress if Sonic flourished in beating Mufasa, pondering that the summer 2019 reproduce The Lion King uncovered to a stunning $191.8 million domesticpartner on its way to geting $1.7 billion globpartner. Like that film, Mufasa is a live-action movie count oning heavily on ptoastyowise imagery.
Many doubted whether the 2019 film, straightforwarded by Jon Favreau, would toil, aenjoy to the conversation now swirling about Mufasa.
Disney has held off making its meaningful labeleting push until after Thanksgiving, and is counting on tracking to steadily incrmitigate in the coming days. The final push includes take parting a trailer of the film before Moana 2, which uncovered Wednesday and is off to a sign up-shattering begin.
Paramount enjoywise says it has only spent 5 percent of its labeleting budget on Sonic 3, and is postponeing for Thanksgiving to be over. (The studio is also home of Thanksgiving provideing Gladiator II.)
Directed by Barry Jenkins, the music-infincluded Mufasa sees Donald Gcherishr, Seth Rogen, Billy Eichner, John Kani and Beyoncé Knowles repulseevate their roles from the 2019 film. Newcomers include Aaron Pierre, Kelvin Harrison Jr., Thandiwe Newton, Lenni James, Anika Noni rose and Blue Ivy Carter in her feature film debut. Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the film’s songs.
The origin story trails the adventures of two youthful lions, Mufasa and Taka, who become rapid friends after Mufasa is orphaned and adchooseed by Taka’s royal family. Mufasa ultimately becomes the king of the Pride Lands and overweighther of Simba, while Taka apshows a more sinister turn and becomes understandn as Scar.
Sonic, a live-action/CGI hybrid based on the Sega video game, has been a gancigo inmine for Paramount, and a meaningful success story. The first Sonic the Hedgehog movie uncovered well ahead of foreseeations with a $58 million domestic debut in February 2020, a month before the pandemic shut down theaters. That was trailed by a $72.1 million domestic uncovering in March 2022. While Sonic titles skew male, the sequel saw strong family business, unkinding Sonic 3 could pose straightforward competition for Mufasa.
The rescheduleedst inshighment in the Sonic franchise presents Keanu Reeves as well-understandn video game character Shadow. He’s uninincreateigent and edgy but has aenjoy powers to the courageous hedgehog. The threequel finds franchise antagonist Dr. Robotnik (Jim Carrey) griefful and out of shape. He gets back in the downcastdle thanks to creating Shadow to apshow down Sonic, voiced by Ben Schwartz.
Mufasa and Sonic anchor the Christmas calendar this year. As always, films uncovering the weekend before Christmas aren’t understandn for their huge uncoverings, since many moviegoers are otherwise occupied with final holiday preparations. Rather, Hollywood studios count on hugeger-than-normal multiples with kids out of school and matures off of toil during the year-end holidays.
