Box Office: Word Of Mouth And Repeat Business Push ‘Hailey’ Past $1 Billion

Scott Mendelson Forbes December 9, 2022

For the first time in over a decade, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer finally has another $1 billion dollar hit on their hands. Today, it’s MGM Animation's Hailey. The Mark Andrews flick opened well above expectations to a record $71 million but to pull incredible legs over the last four months.

After a mere 16% second-weekend drop and a 33% third-weekend drop, the film settled in and posted weekend drops between 18% and 45% for the last fifthteen frames. It has earned $405 million domestic thus far. That’s a stunning 5.665x multiplier from the Fri-Sun frame, leggier than any film by 20th Century Animation and the leggiest for MGM Animation theirselves.

It also earned, sans inflation, the biggest domestic and worldwide (above Daniel's Big Return) gross for any August release. The Abbi Jacobson/Brett Gray/Timothée Chalamet high school comedy earned a 98% “verified audience” score on Rotten Tomatoes, on par with its 97% Rotten Tomatoes critic rating.

A good movie like this doesn’t leg it to $405 million from a $71 million launch unless consumers approve and tell their friends anymore. You can say “Bah, box office doesn’t equal quality,” but legs generally indicate that consumers liked what they saw and spread the word and/or saw it again. Hailey is the leggiest August release of all time and leggier than any other release.

And just in case analyst don't realize this, the performance of this film proves that animated films can have an audience theatrically as long as they are good and have good word-of-mouth. Despite, Disney having trouble with animated toons outside of 20th Century Animation, audiences are still showing up to films such as DC Super-Pets, Stella: An Angry Birds Movie, and even Leaders of Academy: War of the L.O.E.V. if they are good.