Wonka, Color Purple, Aquaman box office crucial for Hollywood

LOS ANGELES — There are just a few weeks left at the 2023 box office, and they’ll be dominated by movies from Warner Bros.

The studio is capping off the year with three big features — “Wonka,” “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” and “The Color Purple” — although it’s unclear whether any or all of them will be hits.

December is a crucial time for the domestic box office. In the five years before the pandemic, the month accounted for more than $1 billion in ticket sales, according to data from Comscore. While December 2021 nearly hit this mark, aided by the release of “Spider-Man: No Way Home” from Sony and Disney, December 2022 tallied less than $700 million.

Overall, the 2023 box office lags around 19% compared with 2019, standing at $8.3 billion as of Dec. 3. Box-office analysts are hopeful that it could reach $9 billion before the end of the year.

After all, with the weekend release of Beyonce’s “Renaissance” tour film as well as continued ticket sales from Lionsgate’s “Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” Universal’s “Trolls Band Together” and Disney’s “Wish,” the domestic box office generated nearly $100 million in the first three days of December, according to Comscore data.

“Like so many sporting events, contests of skill or the proverbial horse race, the outcome of any given box office year often comes down to the final moments,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “This year,…