The six-week-out projection for Disney‘s Mufasa: The Lion King has hit via Quorum tracking service, which sees it at a $59 million-$66 million opening when the Barry Jenkins-directed prequel hits cinemas on December 20.
Keep in mind that the fire-breathing campaigns for Mufasa and Paramount’s Sonic The Hedgehog 3 haven’t truly begun yet; heck, they’ll be dropping trailers left, right and center during the box office perfect storm that is Wicked, Gladiator II and Moana 2. Also, keep in mind the prediction is for general audiences.
On the Quorum ‘Pay to See’ scale — meaning audiences polled who’ll actually shell out money to get off the couch — Mufasa roars with a 62, a number up there with the Thanksgiving holy trinity of Wicked (64), Gladiator II (63) and Moana 2 (62).
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Mufasa skews more female, while Sonic the Hedgehog 3, which it’s opening against, skews male. Mufasa also looks to grab the over-35 audience, while the latter is younger. Mufasa, which tells the origin story of Simba’s king-to-be father, features voices that include Aaron Pierre, Donald Glover, Thandiwe Newton, Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen.
While the weekend before Christmas has been home to some of the biggest openings of all time — like the second-best ever domestic start of Spider-Man: No Way Home at $260M (December 17, 2021) — it’s all about the 5-6x multiple that can be generated from a movie bowing in this corridor. Christmas falls on a Wednesday this year, and from that point on moviegoing is full tilt, with some filmgoers seeing 2-3 movies through the first weekend of the New Year.
Mufasa, a photorealistic animated movie, is a prequel to the 2019 version of The Lion King, directed by Jon Favreau, which opened to $191.7M and went on to gross $543.6M domestic, $1.66 billion global.
Disney didn’t respond for request for comment on the Mufasa projections.
Note that Quorum was the first tracking service to forecast that Disney/Marvel Studios’ Deadpool & Wolverine would exceed $200M in its opening weekend.