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Two of the three major movie releases on Christmas Day don’t offer much in the way of family-friendly viewing for the holiday.
“Babygirl,” starring Nicole Kidman, is an erotic thriller featuring Kidman embroiled in a torrid affair with an intern at her company.
Kidman described the film, also starring Antonio Banderas and Harris Dickinson, as her husband and affair partner, respectively, as “obviously about sex, it’s about desire, it’s about your inner thoughts, it’s about secrets, it’s about marriage, it’s about truth, power, consent” while at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
“This is one woman’s story, and this is, I hope, a very liberating story,” the Academy Award winner said, per Variety.
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“Nosferatu,” on the other hand, is a dark, horror-filled retelling of the original 1922 silent film based on the story of “Dracula,” with early reviews also labeling it “erotic” and “seductively macabre,” according to IndieWire.
One of the film’s stars, Lily-Rose Depp, acknowledged the movie isn’t your typical Christmas story, but joked, “Who doesn’t love a good scare on Christmas?” in an interview with Entertainment Weekly.
“There are a couple Christmas-y Easter eggs in there, so I feel like if you watch it on Christmas, you’ll feel in tune, you’ll feel like they’re in the same time as you,” she continued. “And, you know, there’s snow! It gets pretty cold. Who doesn’t love to think about death and the realm of the dead on Christmas Day?”
There’s also a larger strategy behind the decision to release those two films on the biggest holiday of the year.
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“It actually [has] nothing to do with the holiday season,” Travis Knox, associate professor at Chapman University told Fox News Digital. “It’s awards season. All of those movies you’re talking about are being talked about for potential Oscar nominations.”
Knox explained, “in order to qualify for the Academy, you have to be in a theater for seven days. And so, you look at the 25th of December and you open [then], that gives you seven days. So tucking in a movie right at the end, maybe not releasing on a huge number of screens, makes them all Oscar eligible.”
“A lot of them, what they’re looking for, is keep them on a more limited number of screens into the new year. See what happens with the awards season and then start. If you start winning, you capitalize on that to expand into more and more theaters. And that’s really what they’re playing for.”
The third major release on Christmas Day is the Bob Dylan biopic, “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet, which certainly has broader appeal, in part because of its star, who Knox pointed out, is “the number one favorite of everybody in their late teens and early 20s” and likely to draw an audience.
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“Wicked” is also debuting its sing-along screening option on Christmas Day, giving people the opportunity to belt their hearts out with the box-office hit.
Lara Rosales, senior writer for Tell-Tale TV, told Fox News Digital, “A lot of people want to go and sing along, and so far, it’s been like, ‘Please don’t sing while we’re watching the movie.’ But that gives a bunch of people the opportunity to do so, especially those who have children and want something to do that day and have already maybe seen the movie. And the kids are obsessed with this soundtrack like so many are, so it’s a good possibility for them to watch as well.”
As for new films more specifically tied to the Christmas season, many of those now reside on streaming services and cable channels, like Hallmark, Lifetime and Netflix.
Rosales speculates that the COVID-19 pandemic led to a shift in what was available in theaters versus at home.
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“People were using those platforms more because even when the cinema reopened, a lot of people were afraid to go to the movie theater and be in an enclosed space with so many other people that they chose streaming services and those kind of movies became more popular, and they were more accessible for people,” she said.
Rosales continued, “You don’t have to pay for a ticket for every single family member. You have that streaming subscription and that’s enough for everybody to watch it. So I feel like it became more accessible and more of like a family-friendly kind of environment for people to just watch it. Also, if you have small children, you don’t have to worry about going to the movie theater and maybe your kids disrupting everybody else. When it’s a Christmas movie, you can just relax and enjoy with them at home.”
Knox noted that in addition to movies like “Wicked,” “Moana 2” and “Mufasa: The Lion King” are both already in theaters, so “it’s not like there’s no family fare. It’s just it’s actually a really crowded season for big studio family fare. And that might also be scaring some people off about trying to release a brand-new holiday movie, not based on a piece of IP at this time of year.”
Amazon MGM did release an original Christmas movie in theaters in November, the action comedy “Red One,” starring Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans. The film, which boasted a budget of $250 million, only opened to $32 million in the United States with mediocre reviews (the film currently has a 30% critic score on Rotten Tomatoes).
Last week, when “Red One” landed on Prime Video, the company shared it was the most-watched film debut ever on the streaming platform, pulling in 50 million viewers worldwide.
“Whether or not people like it, the value of these movies is different for our business model.… If we can put these movies out theatrically and cover our P&A [print and advertising] costs, why wouldn’t we? We’re getting a massive marketing campaign that’s being paid for before the film gets to streaming,” Kevin Wilson, head of theatrical distribution for Amazon MGM told Variety.
Knox finds the claim “dubious” about the film’s financial success.
“Back of the napkin math, they’ve now lost over a quarter of $1 billion before it even starts streaming. And they’re saying that 50 million viewers in the first weekend… that that’s a win. [With] that much money, did you really get enough new subscribers? It’s Amazon. They’re already subscribed to Prime. I feel like that was a huge mistake, spending that much money on that film was just irresponsible.”
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Rosales feels the film might have been more theatrically successful had it premiered close to the actual holiday.
“Probably a lot of people will be watching that movie, particularly now that it came out on a streaming platform, and they might be watching it closer to Christmas and with their family and that’s probably why it didn’t do so well in the box office, and it might do better now on streaming services,” she said. “And I think that for any Christmas movie to be successful, it has to come out closer to Christmas Day just to give people like sort of the Christmas mood and get in the holiday spirit and just the countdown to Christmas and all that stuff.”
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Fewer family-friendly or holiday-themed movies releasing on Christmas Day is not an entirely new phenomenon.
Per BoxOffice Mojo, “Sherlock Holmes,” “Django Unchained,” “Les Misérables,” “Unbroken” and “Into the Woods” are currently the top five grossing movies released on Christmas Day.
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Knox explained those five “are arguably all really, really strong movies. And yes, it’s a Christmas Day release. But again, that’s more about awards.”
“There are plenty of families out there that are going to go see a Quentin Tarantino movie [like ‘Django Unchained’], ‘Sherlock Holmes’ and ‘Les Mis.’ They have built in audiences, so it actually makes perfect sense to open doors on Christmas Day.”
As Rosales notes, going to the movies on Christmas Day as a family or with friends is a popular activity, so a variety of options matters.
“They’re different genres, different kinds of stories, and they all attract people because they’re different. If we’re going to start premiering Christmas movies like is happening now in November, by Christmas Day, we’re definitely going to want to watch something different,” she said. “And that’s what those movies offer.”