‘The Color Purple’ Becomes The Second-Biggest Christmas Opening Day Of All Time

The new version of ‘The Color Purple’ film opened on Christmas day.

To HUGE success!

Variety reports:

“The Color Purple,” a vibrant adaptation of the book-turned-beloved-movie-turned-hit-Broadway-musical, dominated at the box office on Christmas Day.

The film has outperformed expectations with $18 million from 3,152 North American theaters. It’s the largest Christmas Day opening for a film since 2009, and the second-biggest Christmas Day opening of all time.

Those ticket sales were enough to lead the way on Monday ahead of two other newcomers, Neon’s racing drama “Ferrari” and director George Clooney’s inspirational sports story “The Boys in the Boat.” Warner Bros. impressively held the top three spots on domestic charts as “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and “Wonka” swam to second and third place, respectively.

Boosted by positive reviews and a glowing “A” CinemaScore, “The Color Purple” marks the first musical in some time that’s resonated at the box office. The film, backed by Warner Bros. and directed by Blitz Bazawule, collected more in a single day than recent stage-to-screen stories — including “West Side Story” ($10.5 million), “In the Heights” ($11 million), “Dear Evan Hansen” ($7.5 million) and “Cats” ($6.6 million) — earned in their opening weekends. Of course, “The Color Purple” benefitted by premiering on Christmas Day, one of the most popular days of the year for moviegoing. But this is a promising start for the $100 million-budgeted musical, which should benefit from word of mouth in the coming days.

“The Color Purple” looks to remain the de facto choice for families over the remainder of what has otherwise been a lackluster holiday season.

Setting such a record is no small feat and those involved with the film should be more than proud with its opening day box office performance.

A Merry Christmas for them, indeed!