Deadline’s Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament has returned, and as you’ll see from the most profitable films of 2024 that we’re about to disclose, a movie’s game doesn’t end at the box office. Rather, its downstream revenues and subsequent home windows must be taken into account. Streaming continues to be a wildcard: While traditional motion picture studios such as Disney, Warner Bros, Sony, Paramount and Universal rely on lucrative pay two and three streamer deals to catapult their slates into the black, those streamers who’ve embraced theatrical (specifically Amazon MGM Studios and Apple Original Films) have a clandestine metric as to how they evaluate a movie’s post-cinema success.
For Apple, its big-budget spends are akin to advertisement costs for their tech products, while an Amazon MGM title’s ultimate endgame is tied to myriad metrics on Prime Video and the Amazon shopping site. By traditional studio P&L standards, some of those releases would be considered flops. Given that, Apple and Amazon are excluded from this year’s box office survey.
The Most Valuable Blockbuster series runs later rather than sooner as we gather the best data possible from seasoned and trusted sources on 2024’s event films, bombs, and low- to midsize-budget wins.
The Film
SONIC THE HEDGEHOG 3
Paramount Pictures
Paramount kicked off our tournament last year with another family title, Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie, and they’re at again this year with this live-action hybrid Sega movie. While a threequel to a successful feature video game adaptation would seem like a natural progression for any studio, there were more than just gold rings at the box office to consider when it came to greenlighting Sonic 3. Part of Paramount Global co-CEO Brian Robbins’ mandate is exploiting family franchises via multi-platforms, right down to the merchandise dollar the studio has a share in here on Sonic the Hedgehog 3.
When the movie as announced in February 2022 during an earnings call, it came with the announcement of the Paramount+ series Knuckles, a spinoff of the movies. Knuckles debuted in April last year, becoming at the time Paramount+’s most-watched original series ever with more than 4 million hours streamed over its premiere weekend. Knuckles was also Paramount+’s most watched kids and family title ever.
Another plus factor here in the movie franchise’s third chapter was Jim Carrey playing double roles as Dr. Robotnik and his grandfather, the head of project Shadow. Keanu Reeves joined the voice cast in the role of Shadow the Hedgehog, who lived through tragedy and sought revenge. It was enough to make the fanboys go wild, with the 13-24 set showing up at 64% over opening weekend.
Paramount always had the pre-Christmas theatrical release date of December 20 booked for Sonic 3, but then Disney dated on top with its prequel to the $1.1 billion-grossing The Lion King movie, Mufasa: The Lion King, setting up a major showdown of family movies over the Christmas frame.
The Box Score
The Bottom Line
Sonic the Hedgehog 3, skewing more fanboy than boy or girl, won the domestic weekend over Mufasa, $60.1 million-$35.4 million. Mufasa won the global opening weekend with $122.2M as Sonic 3 delayed its overseas rollout until Christmas Day. At the end of the day, Mufasa beat Sonic 3 at both the stateside ($254M) and global B.O. ($722M). Some of that had to do with a family groundswell post-Christmas into the New Year, when many were on break. But also, Sonic 3 had a shorter theatrical window to PVOD than Mufasa: 32 days to 60 days. Despite the horse race between hedgehog and lion, there were many upsides here for Paramount. Sources tell us the entire Sonic the Hedgehog franchise is worth around $350M to Paramount; that amount isn’t included in the above waterfall. That’s monies from Paramount+ ad revenue, new subscriber acquisition and overall subscriber revenues, all tied to Sonic. The $150M streaming figure above includes what Paramount paid itself to put the title directed by Jeff Fowler and produced by Toby Ascher and Neal H. Moritz on P+, but also movies from the windows that spill from P+ to MGM+/P+ and then Prime/MGM+/P+. Paramount is an equal co-fi partners with Sega on the $122M production cost, but the Melrose lot also gets a distribution fee off the top. Paramount participates with Sega in Sonic the Hedgehog picture-related merchandising, meaning that the studio holds rights and Sega administers the merchandising. Net profit is $123.6M.
