The Thanksgiving box office has not been looking good, with overall revenue being far behind what it usually is on this holiday.
With Marvel Studios’ Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, Disney is likely experiencing both feast and famine. On the one hand, the movie is on track to have another strong weekend with $60 million to $65 million in ticket sales (which puts it third at the box office chart). However, its animated feature Strange World is not doing well at all. With a current total of $10 million to $12 million, it stands to be Disney’s lowest debuting release since Frozen.
After leading Tuesday with $9.5 million from 4,117 theaters for a domestic total of $309.6 million, Black Panther led Wednesday with another $10 million from 4,174 theaters and had a total of $313.7 million after just 11 days domestically.
Strange World’s opening day gross was $4.2 million from 4,174 sites after earning a lukewarm B CinemaScore. This pace indicates that their five-day opening will be $24 million-$26 million, which is the worst opening in Disney Animation’s Thanksgiving history. Disney Animation typically dominates the holiday season but this title didn’t do well.
Last year, Encanto posted a five-day gross of $40.6 million after earning $7.8 million on Wednesday despite the challenges posed by COVID-19. And in 2019, Frozen 2 grossed a record $125 million for five days.
Two days after Bob Iger’s return as CEO of the Walt Disney Company, after he was ousted by the company, Strange World opens.
Other new films are also competing for their place at the table on Thanksgiving. On Wednesday, Sony’s Korean war drama Devotion grossed $1.8 million from 3,228 sites in the North American market, putting it in the “$10 million+” range for a projected 5-day gross. The film stars Glen Powell of Top Gun: Maverick and Jonathan Majors.
Netflix isn’t reporting Rian Johnson’s Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery as its box-office numbers, in line with the company’s longstanding practice of keeping them hidden.
Glass Onion is getting an unprecedented release and is the first of the streamer’s titles to play in all three of the country’s largest chains — AMC Theatres, Regal Cinemas, and Cinemark Theatres. Rivals distribution executives still have their way of collecting data directly from exhibition contacts, but two sources tell The Hollywood Reporter that Johnson’s sequel likely earned $2 million on Wednesday from 638 U.S. theaters. That means it could open to $12 million over the five-day holiday corridor, far less than the $41.4 million grossed by Johnson’s Knives Out over Thanksgiving 2019 (the first film received a traditional theatrical release from Lionsgate in more than 3,800 locations) but ahead of many of this year’s holiday movies.
The Menu, which is in theaters now and being received very well, made around a million dollars yesterday (Wednesday). That’s a really good number and means it might take anywhere from six to eight million over the next five days.
This awards contender grossed an estimated $921,000 Wednesday after expanding into a total of 2,727 theaters. The specialty movie is anticipating a five-day gross of about $4 million.
Steven Spielberg’s movie, The Fablemans, a key awards player, is rolling out more slowly in hopes of having the same success as the Oscar-winning film, Green Book. Spielberg’s latest film opened in New York and Los Angeles over the November 11 – 13 weekend before it expanded into 637 locations on Wednesday. From Universal and Amblin, the movie has already earned an estimated $400,000 by Wednesday morning with a five-day gross projected to be $3 million.
Holdover Black Adam is also in the mix with an anticipated five-day opening of $4 million from 2,842 theaters. It arrived on digital release on Nov. 22.
Some analysts are reasoning that the holiday box office is taking a hit because people can now travel in earnest, especially with the pandemic ends.
