NEW YORK (AP) — Christmas arrived early at the box office this year.
“Moaña 2” drew a surge of viewers over the Thanksgiving weekend, setting records with $221 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. That, combined with “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” made for an unprecedented weekend in theaters and a confluence of blockbusters more akin to those often found in late December.
Expectations were high for Walt Disney Co.’s “Moana 2,” but the film, originally planned as a series for Disney+ before being redirected to the big screen, confounded predictions. Its five-day release set a new record for Thanksgiving movie attendance. (The previous best was $125 million for “Frozen 2” in its second week of release in 2019.) “Moana 2” totaled $165.3 million internationally; With $386 million worldwide, it is the second-best global release of the year.
At the same time, the feeling of “Wicked” showed no signs of slowing down. The Universal Pictures musical grossed $117.5 million over the five-day weekend, raising its two-week global total to $359.2 million. Without taking inflation into account, “Wicked” is now the highest-grossing Broadway adaptation, surpassed by “Grease.” (That 1978 film grossed $190 million, but if inflation is taken into account, the figure would exceed $900 million.)
Meanwhile, “Gladiator II” also held up well, dropping 44% from its opening weekend. Ridley Scott’s sequel to his best picture Oscar-winning original grossed $44 million in its second weekend. While its hefty $250 million price tag will make profitability difficult, “Gladiator II” has quickly grossed $320 million worldwide.
Those three films brought the overall box office to a record $420 million in total ticket sales for Thanksgiving weekend, according to Comscore, more than $100 million more than ever before. For an industry that has been battered in recent years by the pandemic, work stoppages and turmoil caused by streaming, it was a triumphant weekend that showed the still potent power of the Hollywood blockbuster machine. Before “Wicked,” “Moana 2” and “Gladiator II” hit theaters, ticket sales were about 25% below pre-pandemic levels.
Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners, said the weekend showed what’s possible when “all the pieces of the puzzle come together” in compelling, big-budget movies with marketing muscle.
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“We are very optimistic that this weekend will be the beginning of what we believe is a full charge into the future,” he said. “The remaining quarter of this year looks very promising and then into 2025 and 2026. We expect next year to be the first normal year this industry has had in a long time.”
Like the last time long-awaited films collided on the release calendar: the much-hyped 2023. “Barbenheimer” – the film industry could once again see evidence of a rising wave of movie attendance that is lifting all the blockbusters. In recent years, studios have typically tried to space out most of their major releases. Earlier this fall, “Venom: The Last Dance,” for example, was the number one movie for three consecutive weeksdespite not having had much success.
“For a long, long time, there has been a belief in Hollywood that you can’t compare blockbuster movies to each other,” O’Leary said. “But the truth is that competition is good. It’s good for movies. It’s good for studies. It’s good for theater owners. But it is especially good for the movie-going public.”
“Moana 2” was the nexus of a change in strategy for Disney. When it began development, it was designed as a streaming series. But when Bob Iger returned as CEO, he reconsidered the balance between film and streaming. After all, the original “Moana” was the most watched film on Disney+ in 2023, with the additional benefit of $680 million at the box office in 2016. It was only in February of this year that Iger announced the release of “Moana 2,” with Auli. ‘i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson return as the voices of Moana and Maui.
“It just shows you that the big screen and the small screen are not antagonistic. They can be complementary and additive,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “Whoever made the decision to go to the big screen globally with ‘Moana 2,’ it was one of the most important decisions ever made.”
And he helped lead the resurgence of Walt Disney Co., whose last two November animated releases, “Strange World” and “Wish,” flopped in theaters. “Moana 2” may become the studio’s third billion-dollar-grossing film in 2024, along with “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Although reviews for “Moana 2” have only been 65% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it an “A-” CinemaScore.
“Moana 2” is also part of a major uptick in family movies. According to David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, family moviegoing in 2024 will account for roughly $6.8 billion in ticket sales, roughly the sums of 2022 and 2023, combined.
After such big releases, “Moana 2” and “Wicked” are likely to continue driving the box office into December. The only question will be whether this year’s Christmas movies, historically a much bigger holiday period for theaters, will be able to come close to matching the Thanksgiving lineup. Among the films targeting that Christmas corridor are Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and Searchlight’s “A Complete Unknown,” starring Timothée Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan.
Final national figures will be published on Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
- “Moana 2”, $135 million.
- “Wicked,” $80 million.
- “Gladiator II” $30.7 million.
- “Red One,” $12.9 million.
- “The best Christmas parade of all time”, $3.3 million.
- “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Murderer”, $2.4 million.
- “Venom: The Last Dance”, $2.2 million.
- “Heretic”, $956,797.
- “The Wild Robot”, $670,000.
- “A real pain,” $665,000.
© 2024 The Canadian Press
