Box Office Report for the Week of November 30

In typical Thanksgiving fashion, Disney has once again obliterated the box office with their yearly animated endeavor from Walt Disney Animation Studios. This time around, Zootopia 2 opened to $96.8 million over its three-day period, with the five-day total reaching $156 million. Globally, the film has already made $556 million in one weekend, putting it on the road to $1 billion worldwide much sooner than later.

As a result, this is now the highest-grossing opening weekend of the year, and the second biggest Thanksgiving holiday haul behind…Disney’s Moana 2, which was released last year. It has now become the fourth-highest-grossing opening of all time at the global box office. Disney is outdoing itself, like The Mouse in its heyday, especially in 2019, when they hasn’t dominated the box office like this in a very long time. Even though some of their films didn’t perform as strongly as others, the success of both Lilo & Stitch and Zootopia 2 this year does bode well for the financial future of the studio, who is looking to ramp up its theatrical releases and is pretty much ignoring streaming, with Avatar: Fire and Ash set to make quite the holiday cume by the end of next month.

Wicked: For Good is also continuing its momentum, with a $62.8 million domestic tally in its three-day period, and over $93 million in the five-day weekend. Its global tally sits now at $393.2 million, eyeing a $500-600 million global run, which wouldn’t be as strong as the first part, but still would turn a considerable profit for Universal, which is once again looking for this installment to be a major awards contender come Oscar season.

Speaking of Oscar contenders, Chloé Zhao‘s Hamnet brought a very strong debut in only 119 venues, with $1.4 million in the five days, and $880.000 for the three-day weekend, a $11.300 per-theater average! The movie will expand to more cinemas in the coming weeks and could prove a major success for Focus Features, as it looks to sweep some awards shows early in the season. David Freyne‘s Eternity also opened widely this week, grossing $3.1 million across 1,348 venues.

Next week should be a relatively slow time, apart from Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 giving some competition to Zootopia 2, but the real show-stopper, as we know, will be how many billions of dollars James Cameron‘s Avatar: Fire and Ash will make? As the world premiere for the movie is happening tomorrow, with many critics around the world seeing it as well on the same day, it won’t be long before all of us know if the film will eclipse Ne Zha 2 as the year’s highest-grossing picture, and be as big of a juggernaut for awards as it past two installments did.

While I have not personally seen this third installment, all I can say to those still doubting Avatar‘s cultural impact is: never bet against King Cameron.

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. Zootopia 2 (Disney): $96.8M – 4,000 theatres
2. Wicked: For Good (Universal): $62.8M (-57%) – 4,115 theatres
3. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t (Lionsgate): $7.0M (-22%) – 3,092 theatres
4. Predator: Badlands (Disney): $4.8M (-27%) – 2,750 theatres
5. The Running Man (Paramount): $3.7M (-35%) – 2,749 theatres
6. Eternity (A24): $3.1M – 1,348 theatres
7. Rental Family (Disney): $2.1M (-37%) – 1,925 theatres
8. Hamnet (Universal): $880.000 – 119 theatres
9. Sisu: Road to Revenge (Sony): $810.000 (-66%) – 2,222 theatres
10. Nuremberg (Sony): $749.325 (-38%) –540 theatres

Source: Comscore