Thanksgiving 5-Day U.S. Box Office Hitting Amazing All-Time $420M High; AMC Boss Adam Aron Declares “A National Phenomenon” – Update
SUNDAY AM UPDATE after Nov. 30 post 11:21AM: The Thanksgiving stretch is delivering an unprecedented estimated $420M at the domestic box office, that’s according to Comscore since our post yesterday.
EntTelligence reports 46M turkeys were eaten over the holiday while 30M people saw the top three movies. Moana 2 pulled in 17.4M admissions, Wicked 8.7M people while Gladiator II counted $3.3M over the Wednesday-Sunday stretch.
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What’s clear in the current post Covid marketplace, is that while there is no floor to when a movie bombs, there is also no ceiling to when movies connect, and that’s what we had here in Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II over the Wednesday to Sunday holiday.
AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron says that this weekend is “a national phenomenon” when it comes to moviegoing.
That Wednesday through Sunday tally for all movies breaks the previous Thanksgiving record for all titles from 2018 when Ralph Breaks the Internet drove the marketplace to a $315.6M total.
Distribution sources always felt we were in for an enormous moviegoing rebound in the post Covid-post strikes era fueled by the massive want-to-see of Disney’s Moana 2, and the second weekends of Universal’s Wicked and Paramount’s Gladiator 2. For those keeping track, the 10-day box office since Friday, Nov. 22 when Wicked and Gladiator 2 opened is bound to gross a huge $681.5M.
As we told you, Moana 2 is setting a five-day opening and Thanksgiving record of $221M, Wicked became the highest grossing movie based on a Broadway musical ($263M) and will have the third best five-day take ($117.5M) over Thanksgiving while Paramount’s adult moviegoer destination Gladiator II is seeing $44M.
What’s quite clear is that counterprogramming of tentpoles works in a given weekend, and should not be avoided. When tentpoles are of a great quality, all boats rise, and here we have three movies with very good Rotten Tomatoes audience scores: Wicked (96%), Moana 2 (87%) and Gladiator II (83%) over-indexing. It’s funny, even after experiencing a high point like this at the box office, especially pre-pandemic, you’d think the major studios would continue to program big movies over a heavy moviegoing period like this year after year, but they sometimes come up short on product or get scared of another big fish on the marquee. Studios should take this year’s success as a come-to-Jesus: leave no stone unturned when it comes to booking big films; the marquee can be shared with a Disney animated movie. Post Covid, the top movies over Thanksgiving (five-day) were quite less next to what’s going on this year; clearly, 2021 audiences were still skittish: There was Disney’s Encanto debut in 2021 ($40.5M), Disney/Marvel Studios’ holdover of Black Panther: Wakanda Forever ($63.8M) and last year’s holdover of Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes ($42.2M).
No. 2 circuit Regal Cineworld Boss Eduardo Acuna exclamied, “Tis the season for moviegoing … the Thanksgiving weekend has completely exceeded our wildest expectations with records for Regal Cineworld in attendance, box office, and concessions. Congratulations to all our studio partners on this record-breaking weekend! The theatrical experience is one that cannot be replicated, and we are excited to keep this momentum going through the end of the year with blockbuster releases including Kraven, Sonic 3, and Mufasa to name just a few.”
Elated Comscore Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian about the fantastic box office run, “The planets aligned perfectly for movie theatres over this Thanksgiving holiday with a combination of films perfectly programmed to deliver massive box office revenue that was supercharged by the Glicked marketing hook that drew attention to the big screen and then followed brilliantly by Moana 2 This will now be the blueprint for how a rising box office tide can indeed raise all ships by virtue of having three high profile blockbusters in the mix at once all pulling in the same direction to great effect.”
Next year, there’s Wicked: Part 2 on the pre-Thanksgiving Friday, as well as Paramount’s Edgar Wright reboot of The Running Man with Glen Powell and Josh Brolin, an untitled Warner Bros/New Line movie, and Angel Studios’ animated David. They’ll be joined by Disney’s Zooptopia 2 on Thanksgiving eve. The more, the merrier.
All figures will become final on Monday.
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