‘Mary Poppins Returns’ Floating $4.8M Opening Wednesday, 96% Bigger Than ‘Greatest Showman’ – Update

THURSDAY AM UPDATE/WRITETHRU: Disney’s Mary Poppins Returns is coming in around an estimated $4.8M for Wednesday after industry midday projections pushed the film significantly higher in the $7M-$8M vicinity. The sequel to the 1964 Oscar-winning musical led all titles yesterday. Disney will be reporting their official opening day figure later this morning.

Box Office analysts were seeing pre-sales around mid-day, which puffed up estimates, with evening business tapering off. The fall-off in projections for Mary Poppins Returns has nothing to do with the movie, rather the time of year. Moviegoers and families are still distracted by pre-holiday activities. There was only 6% of K-12 schools off yesterday, and remember musicals leg out: Fox’s The Greatest Showman made 92% of its $174.3M domestic B.O. last year after Christmas (and largely without Oscar buzz, it only received a nom for best song).

Those who showed up for Mary Poppins Returns last night enjoyed the Rob Marshall-directed musical with an A- CinemaScore and four stars on ComScore/Screen Engine’s PostTrak. Mary Poppins Returns was female heavy with 36% F25+ leading (they loved it the most at 91%), followed by F25- at 27%, M25+ at 24% and M25- at 14%. Family breakdown was 65% general audiences, 22% Kids, and 12% Parents. Other demos were 64% Caucasian, 19% Hispanic, 8% Asian and 4% African American. These demos will change as PostTrak polls throughout the weekend.

Mary Poppins Returns‘ opening day is under the $7.2M Wednesday pre-Christmas opening for Sony’s Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle last year as well as Disney’s Amy Adams 2007 musical Enchanted which opened the Wednesday before Thanksgiving to $7.96M, however, it’s 96% higher than the first day of The Greatest Showman a year ago ($2.45M). Greatest Showman‘s six-day opening was $19M.

Mary Poppins is currently booked at 4,090 theaters. Tuesday night there were special Dolby auditorium previews at 250 sites, which Disney didn’t separately report.

Sony’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse filed second on Wednesday with $2.8M, -35% from Tuesday with a running six-day total of $45.2M.

Warner Bros.’ The Mule was third with $1.8M, -37% for a six-day run of $23.9M.

Aquaman and Bumblebee start their previews at 5PM tonight