No, Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday in the rest of the world but you’d think it could be as we’re in for another box office stretch for the record books, with the opening of Disney’s Zootopia 2 and the second weekend of Universal’s Wicked: For Good bound to send the domestic box office to what could be the second best five-day Thanksgiving stretch ever after last year’s holiday Wednesday-Sunday record of $424.9 million.
Remember, last year was off a combo of Disney’s Moana 2 and Universal’s Wicked, two heavily female-leaning tentpoles that didn’t cancel each other out. Currently, the 2018 Thanksgiving stretch ranks as second best with $315.6M, paced by Ralph Breaks the Internet which posted $84.7M over five days.
After returning to form last year at the Thanksgiving box office with a mega franchise in Moana 2 after post-Covid misfires Wish and Strange World, Disney has no plans to drop the ball. Its anticipated Zootopia 2 is looking at a domestic take of $125M over Wednesday-Sunday, with another $135M-$145M from a 93% offshore footprint, good for a massive global debut of $270M on the high end. All territories are going (except for Japan on December 5), with China as always being the wild card. We do expect China to be bigger than the first time around, when the original movie grew week over week; presales, we hear, are fantastic.
It would be the biggest opening we’ve had in a while for an animated movie this year. Stateside, Zootopia 2 will rank as the second biggest Thanksgiving five-day opener after Moana 2‘s mammoth $225.4M. Moana 2‘s global start last year was $389.3M.
Zootopia 2 is playing at 4,000 theatres in North America including at 415 Imax auditoriums, 950 Premium Large Format screens, 2,300 3D screens, 300 D-Box/4D motion screens and 125 ScreenX locations. We’re told that the sequel, which returns the lead voices of Jason Bateman and Ginnifer Goodwin, will share Imax screens with Glinda and Elphaba, with the duo expected to take over evening showtimes.
Advance tickets sales in the U.S. for Zootopia 2 are around $20M, which is in line with Inside Out 2 (that movie posted a $154.2M three-day domestic and $295M global opening, unadjusted for inflation). Previews start today at 2 p.m.
As far as international openings go in likes-for-likes, adjusted for inflation and currency swings, Zootopia 2 will file above Zootopia and Ralphs Breaks the Internet, which debuted to $89M offshore apiece (respective China starts were $22M and $19M), and under that of Frozen 2 (a huge international opening at $247M, boosted by $53M in its first China frame) and Moana 2 ($173M, with $7M from China).
On Wednesday, Zootopia 2 goes in Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. This is followed by
Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, UAE, Ukraine and Uruguay on Thursday, and Finland, India, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, the UK and and Vietnam on Friday.
No Rotten Tomatoes score or audience rating on Zootopia 2. The first movie opened to $75M domestic, legging out to $341.1M stateside and $1 billion global, but that was with $39M from Russia and $236M from China (unadjusted for inflation and currency swings). The original pic, directed by Jared Bush, Byron Howard and Rich Moore, won a Best Animated Feature Oscar for its tale about a city of anthropomorphic animals that isn’t quite unlike our own, and a rookie bunny cop, Judy Hopps (Goodwin), and a cynical con artist fox, Nick Wilde (Bateman), who are forced to together to uncover a conspiracy. In the sequel, Hopps and Wilde are on a new case, with Bush and Howard back directing.
What of Wicked: For Good? The Cynthia Erivo-Ariana Grande movie will continue to fly. Yesterday, the movie posted the best non-holiday box office Monday year-to-date with $14.8M. Although under Wicked‘s first Monday of $15.7M, the hope is to emulate what the first installment did over Thanksgiving last year, with a combination of the sequel having a better start ($147M vs. $112.5M) than the first one, and also the heavily female audience at 71%. Last year, Wicked posted a five-day total of $118.2M and three-day of $81.1M.
Also opening on Wednesday in the U.S. and Canada is A24’s Eternity at 1,000 theaters and Focus Features’ limited release of Oscar winner Chloé Zhao’s British period drama Hamnet in 100 sites.
‘Eternity’
A24
Directed by David Freyne and starring Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner, Eternity is set in an afterlife where souls have one week to decide where to spend eternity. Joan (Olsen) is faced with the impossible choice between the man she spent her life with and her first love, who died young and has waited decades for her to arrive. The pic world premiered at TIFF and is 82% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.
Jessie Buckley in director Chloé Zhao’s ‘Hamnet’
Focus Features
Hamnet, based on Maggie O’Farrell’s New York Times bestselling novel, tells the backstory about how William Shakespeare came to write Hamlet, inspired by his son. The movie, starring Paul Mescal and Jessie Buckley, launched at Telluride and has since held a Rotten Tomatoes certified fresh critics score of 88%.