Auliʻi Cravalho voices Moana in Disney Animation’s “Moana 2.”
Disney
The home field workplace is poised for its greatest Thanksgiving haul because the pandemic because of a Polynesian princess, a pair of witches and a revenge-fueled gladiator.
Disney’s “Moana 2” hit theaters Wednesday and is anticipated to generate between $120 million and $150 million in field workplace receipts within the U.S. and Canada by means of Sunday. It’s joined by Universal’s “Wicked” and Paramount’s “Gladiator II,” both in their second week of domestic screenings.
Box-office analysts imagine the five-day Thanksgiving weekend, which runs from Wednesday to Sunday, ought to simply clear $200 million in ticket gross sales and will even turn into the second- or third-highest Thanksgiving interval in cinematic historical past.
“The trifecta of ‘Moana 2,’ ‘Wicked,’ and ‘Gladiator II’ is a bona fide good storm for film theaters this Thanksgiving,” stated Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founding father of Box Office Theory.
“The vacation used to commonly see main releases combining for all-audience attraction, however that is been a problem for the trade to copy within the post-pandemic period to date,” he stated. “This yr is far completely different with such a holy trinity of tentpole releases that might anchor a number of the greatest all-around field workplace outcomes the vacation body has ever seen.”
The Thanksgiving vacation haul hasn’t topped $200 million since 2019, based on knowledge from Comscore. Currently, the highest-grossing Thanksgiving weekend is 2018’s slate, led by “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “Creed II” and “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald,” which generated $315 million in ticket gross sales mixed. The second-highest haul for the vacation interval was the $294.2 million secured throughout the identical five-day interval in 2013.
“Thanksgiving is arguably a very powerful vacation interval of the yr for film theaters because it units the tone for the year-end field workplace dash,” stated Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “The energy of the ultimate few weeks of the yr will decide the full annual field workplace income and its notion as both a win or a loss for the trade.”
Disney might use one other animation win.
After ruling the Thanksgiving box office for years with titles from Pixar and Disney Animation, it is didn’t reside as much as expectations with its current string of releases.
In 2016, “Moana” opened over the Thanksgiving vacation, producing $82.1 million. The following yr “Coco” took in $72.9 million throughout its opening, and in 2018 “Ralph Breaks the Internet” tallied $84.8 million throughout its debut over the five-day interval. Just earlier than the pandemic in 2019, “Frozen II” added $125 million over the Thanksgiving vacation after opening the week earlier than to greater than $130 million.
Meanwhile, “Encanto,” which arrived throughout the midst of the pandemic, managed to tally $40.6 million in 2021. “Strange World” flopped, having scooped up simply $18.9 million throughout the vacation interval in 2022, and “Wish” snared a meager $31.6 million in 2023. No Disney animated movie was launched over Thanksgiving in 2020.
“Moana 2” ought to outperform these post-pandemic releases, nonetheless. It arrives in theaters a yr after the primary movie was named the top-streamed movie aimed toward children and households. And audiences got here out in droves for Disney and Pixar’s “Inside Out 2” over the summer time. “Inside Out 2” opened to $154.2 million domestically and tallied greater than $1 billion globally throughout its full run.
Disclosure: Comcast is the father or mother firm of NBCUniversal, CNBC and Fandango. NBCUniversal distributed “Wicked.”
