AMC’s second concert movie, Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé, though clearly frontloaded in its previews/Friday with a Saturday tumble of -48% ($6M), remains solid enough to hit a $22M opening, per industry sources. AMC is calling the weekend at $21M. For a movie opening during the listless first weekend of December, that’s fantastic, not far behind Tom Cruise’s 2003 The Last Samurai, which still holds the weekend’s record of $24.2M. Box office org EntTelligence reports 900,000 attendees for Beyoncé this weekend. The 32x Grammy winner catapulted what is typically a truly off weekend at the box office to $95M+, the best the first weekend of December has seen since 2018.
Sources slapped their foreheads over AMC’s move, which was mutual with Beyoncé, to release the movie over what is a terrible box office weekend. However, here it is, and the movie fared quite well, slightly ahead of its $20M expectations. Should the movie have been programmed during 2024, where we need product? Should the movie have arrived so soon in the wake of unicorn Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour? Surely there were other options. But this was the choice that was made. NYC based distributor Variance handled booking for Renaissance stateside, a la Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour, with Trafalgar handling the international release.
Renaissance repped the second straight No. 1 opening at the domestic box office from AMC Theatres Distribution. From Elizabeth Frank, EVP worldwide programming & chief content officer, AMC Theatres:
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