Michael B. Jordan and Sylvester Stallone in 'Creed,' image courtesy of Warner Bros.
Creed continued to hammer at the Thanksgiving weekend box office, snagging another $11.7 million on Black Friday and bringing its cume to $24.18m after its first three days. The film rose a whopping 81% from Thursday to Friday. That's way ahead of the likes of Back to the Future part II (+41%), Unbreakable (+38%) and Four Christmases (+47%) and closer to films with smaller weekday figures like Spy Game (+66%) and Deja Vu (+81%).
That $11.7 million Friday is larger than the $11.1m that Back to the Future part II earned on its opening Friday (back in 1989) following a $7.2m Wednesday and a $7.9m Thursday. And it's just shy of the $12.3m that Unbreakable snagged on its Friday after an $8m Thanksgiving. Comparatively, Creed earned $6.46m on Thursday.
Point being, Creed had a much bigger Friday than most of the other adult-skewing live-action Thanksgiving openers in recent memory, with a jump closer to the kinds of films that did $3m Wednesday and Thursday grosses as opposed to films that earned $6m on their first two respective days. What this means is that, thus far, the film may well flirt with basically scoring the best Thanksgiving weekend debut ever for a live-action movie.
The prior two such record holders are Unbreakable ($46.01 million in 2000) and Four Christmases ($46.05m in 2008). If you use the comparative trajectories of the other Thanksgiving weekend openers that had comparable Thursday-to-Friday jumps, Creed ends the weekend with around $48m and with around $35m for the Fri-Sun weekend.
Now if Friday was something of a fluke, or if it goes back to behaving like the bigger and more frontloaded titles, then we're still looking at a $39-$42 million debut weekend with around $28m for the Fri-Sun frame, which is still terrific for the $35m Ryan Coogler boxing drama.
In terms of hard dollars, it's going to clobber the $26 million Wed-Mon (Christmas was a Monday in 2006) debut of Rocky Balboa and the $27m Wed-Sun debut of Rocky IV over Thanksgiving 1985. Amusingly enough, a $35m five-day debut would be exactly what Rocky III opened with via its first three days in 1982 ($12.4m) when adjusted for inflation.
Heck, that $27m Fri-Sun guestimate would be identical to the adjusted-for-inflation opening of Rocky V ($14m in 1990, $27m today). The adjusted for inflation totals of Rocky V ($80m) and Rocky Balboa ($87m) are potential end points for Creed, as live-action, non-Disney affiliated Thanksgiving openers tend to have mediocre legs unless they get Oscar attention (Hugo, Life of Pi, etc.).
Of course, there is a decent possibility that the Michael B. Jordan drama, which concerns the son of Apollo Creed seeking out Rocky Balboa (Sylvester Stallone) for mentorship and training, will factor into the Oscar race. The acclaimed and crowd-pleasing character drama is both "the kind of movie they don't make anymore" as well as a critically-acclaimed populist picture that comes from a studio (Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.) that doesn't have much else in that corner.
Black Mass isn't as big of a hit or as good of a movie as we all hoped, Johnny Depp's contention aside. The narrative of Sylvester Stallone competing for (possibly winning) Best Supporting Actor for playing his iconic role will be a tough one to resist. And if you want to get icky about it, Creed allows the Academy to score a notch for diversity while ignoring the more confrontational Straight Outta Compton. But that's a conversation for another day.
But ironically the success of this film most reminds me of the (even more successful) 2010 Karate Kid remake. That Sony film was something of an anomaly in the summer of 2010, selling itself not via special effects, being in 3D, or franchise-friendly elements but merely on the fact that it was a darn good character drama/coming-of-age story with a beloved action icon (Jackie Chan) in an against-type dramatic role.
Like The Karate Kid, Creed is a mainstream studio drama featuring a minority lead (Jaden Smith) that wouldn't exist if not for a connection to a popular 1970's/1980's franchise jump-started by director John G. Avildsen. The Karate Kid was a jolt of fresh air in a pretty miserable summer. It opened with $55.6 million and ended up with $359m worldwide on a $40m budget, becoming the year's biggest grosser not in 3D or IMAX.
I still contend to this day that had it opened in November then Jackie Chan would have nabbed an Oscar nomination. It looks like Sly won't have the same problem. We'll talk theatrical legs and what-have-you tomorrow when we get the full weekend estimates.
