Paul, thanks for sharing your Thanksgiving with me. I couldn't wait to be here. Sales this year can defy gravity.
It's amazing. And in fact, what the Bloomingdales CEO just said is very important. He said, we're building memories.
And that's what happens when you're in a physical space, when you're enjoying something in the moment. And in that communal experience, whether you're Bloomingdales or you're in the movie theater, those are memories that are being created. And as you said, you know, we could open to 112 and a half million in the U.
S. over this past week, and it's up to 161 million now. Gladiator to up to 72 million.
Emma wanted to I just got the numbers in has already earned it opened yesterday had some previews on Tuesday has already earned 57. 5 million domestically and $66. 3 million globally.
This will be one of the biggest, if not the biggest Thanksgiving week for movie theaters ever. And that's music to the ears of theater owners. And it's great for audiences as well.
Wow. So how does the Wicked versus Gladiator two rivalry compare to Barb and Hiva? Yeah, well, Barb and Hammer was bigger because it was this summer and the combo of those two films that was so organic and fresh and new, and now everyone's looking for the next Barb and Hammer liquid came out of this pairing this past weekend.
And what that effectively does, it raises the awareness for both movies, which it's certainly done, and then it sets the stage for a final month of the year for the box office that'll have a surge at the very end, which we definitely need in our comScore numbers. In mid-June, the box office domestically was down almost 30%. Now it's down about 11%.
By the time we get to the end of the year, it'll be in single digits. And considering the headwinds at the beginning of the year where the strikes impacted the release calendar and the release and cadence of movies, this is big news and it's so positive for theaters now and heading into 2025. Why is that?
Is it because of the threat from the streamers? What's going wrong? Well, you know, I think what went wrong earlier in the year, because we really didn't hit our stride till mid-June, within sight out to and then we had a string of big hits after that was that the release calendar for movie theaters is very fragile.
And where there were strikes and work stoppages which impacted not only the ability to create films and to produce them, but to market them. Remember a year ago started well, a little over a year ago. Stars couldn't go out and talk about their movies to the press, to the entertainment media.
That really impacted things. And it really took until about halfway into this year that the release schedule evened out. Now, production is fully ramped up.
We've got a great release slate coming up in the coming weeks with Kraven, The Hunter, A Lord of the Rings animated movie Sonic the Hedgehog three, A Lion King Movie. And then on Christmas Day, we're going to have a slate of indie films that looks amazing with Robert Eggers Nosferatu and Nicole Kidman in Baby Girl and a Complete Unknown with Timothy Salame as Bob Dylan. So if you're a movie fan right now, Thanksgiving's a great time to go out and see movies.
But into December, we're going to get a lot of momentum and then it carries over into the box office of 2025. I'd say he's not an unknown to me. He's one of my favorite actors, is to imitate mine, too.
But when you mention all of these stars, I wonder, is that what translates into box office sales or is it, you know, the reviews or is it the kind of demographics that they talk? That's what makes money. That's a great question.
I mean, on a film like Nosferatu or a Complete Unknown or Baby Girl, indie films like that, or definitely it's about the reviews, it's about the critical response. And then audiences who love those types of films, once they get that, you know, stamp of approval from the reviewers and the critics, don't go out and see them on a movie like Wicked and Gladiator and so on. It's about the big brands like Inside Out, too.
With Pixar during the summer, the movie Twisters during the summer, Deadpool and Wolverine during the summer. I mean, the list goes on in a quiet place, day one over the summer. And now we've got all these big branded films in the fall, like we had Venom, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice.
So those are known commodities. Those are playing very well. I think when people again spend their hard earned money, they want to know what they're getting into.
But they're on the indie side of the ledger. They want something fresh, exciting, edgy, very filmmaker focused. So it's kind of of two minds.
It's cinematic. Fast food, on the one hand, in cinematic fine dining on the other. And it works very well when it's working in synchronicity, for sure.
