Box Office: How ‘Moana 2,’ ‘Wicked’ and ‘Gladiator II’ Fueled Biggest Thanksgiving on Record
A trio of blockbusters — “Moana 2,” “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” — are fueling a record-breaking Thanksgiving bounty.
Overall domestic box office receipts between Wednesday and Sunday amounted to $420 million, the biggest Thanksgiving haul in history. It obliterated the previous benchmark of $315 million, set by 2018’s slate of “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” and “Creed II.” Since the pandemic, though, Turkey Day has been all famine and no feast at the box office. The holiday hasn’t topped $200 million since 2019 and plummeted in 2023 to a record low of just $125 million across all films, including Disney’s “Wish,” “Hunger Games” prequel “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” and Ridley Scott’s historical drama “Napoleon.”
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Box office experts believe the rebound in attendance is thanks to effective counterprogramming — and notably of movies that audiences actually wanted to watch in theaters. “Moana 2” brought out families in droves while “Wicked” appealed to women old and young, and “Gladiator II” mostly courted men of all ages. For a while, one-off successes like March’s “Dune: Part Two,” June’s “Inside Out 2” and July’s “Despicable Me 4” and “Deadpool & Wolverine” were steamrolling the movie theater landscape. (“Barbenheimer,” the nickname for last year’s phenomenon of back-to-back screenings of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” was more the exception than the rule.) So it’s encouraging to see that not just one or two but three major movies have managed to sell a meaningful number of tickets over the holiday. Positive reviews and strong word-of-mouth are benefitting the triumvirate of films.
“Since the pandemic, we’ve seen that every demographic has come back to the movies. This indicates that every demographic will come back to the movies at the same time,” says Disney’s head of global theatrical distribution Tony Chambers.
Disney’s sequel to 2016’s “Moana,” which was originally developed for streaming before pivoting to theaters, devoured the competition with $135 million over the traditional weekend and $221 million during the five-day holiday frame. That registers as the biggest Thanksgiving frame by a nautical mile, overtaking 2019’s Disney sequel “Frozen II” ($125 million over the five days) and 2013’s “Hunger Games: Catching Fire” ($109 million over the five days).
Universal’s big-budget adaptation of the musical “Wicked” wasn’t too far behind on domestic charts with $80 million over the traditional weekend and $117.5 million during the Wednesday-to-Sunday stretch. The film, starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo, has grossed $262 million domestically and $359 million after 10 days in theaters. “Gladiator II” took the No. 3 spot with $30.7 million over the traditional weekend and $44 million during the five days. The movie, directed by Ridley Scott and led by Paul Mescal, has generated $111.2 million domestically and $320 million worldwide so far. Combined ticket sales for the three films accounted for 75% of all showtimes and helped to shrink the year-to-date deficit from 10.6% to 6.4% compared to 2023, according to Comscore. Overall revenues remain behind 2019 by roughly 24%, though this week narrowed the gap by 2.5%.
“It’s an encouraging sign that if you have the perfect combination of films at the right time, the marketplace will expand to accommodate them,” says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “This runs counter to the traditional wisdom of the industry that generally likes to put some breathing space between blockbusters, even those that seemingly have little in common. But this may change after the events of the past week.”
Hollywood needs that momentum to offset a potentially muted December at the box office. The 2024 film calendar is lagging in terms of the volume of new releases after last year’s dual labor strikes halted production and pushed major movies into 2025 and beyond. Sony’s R-rated comic book adaptation “Kraven the Hunter” and the Warner Bros. animated “Lord of the Rings” spinoff “The War of the Rohirrim” (both on Dec. 13) are two of the only wide releases on the schedule until Christmas. Then, there’s Disney’s “The Lion King” prequel “Mufasa” and Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” (on Dec. 20) and the Focus Features remake of “Nosferatu” (Dec. 25), as well as a smattering of arthouse offerings like A24’s erotic thriller “Babygirl” and Searchlight’s Timothee Chalamet-led Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown.” Any of those could surprise, but none are guaranteed billion-dollar behemoths, in the vein of “Avatar,” “Star Wars” or ‘“Spider-Man,” with enough gusto to close out the year and power the first few weeks of 2025.
“Thanksgiving moviegoing is shattering records. It’s an enormous lift,” says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. “Is the business back on track again? Is everything OK? No. Parts of the business are doing very well, and parts are not. 2024 has been a volatile and moody year at the box office. Next year is when we’ll see how complete the recovery will be.”
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