\tA trio of blockbusters \u2014 \u201cMoana 2,\u201d \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cGladiator II\u201d \u2014 are fueling a record-breaking Thanksgiving bounty. \tOverall 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\u2019s slate of \u201cRalph Breaks the Internet,\u201d \u201cFantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald\u201d and \u201cCreed II.\u201d Since the pandemic, though, Turkey Day has been all famine and no feast at the box office. The holiday hasn\u2019t topped $200 million since 2019 and plummeted in 2023 to a record low of just $125 million across all films, including Disney\u2019s \u201cWish,\u201d \u201cHunger Games\u201d prequel \u201cThe Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes\u201d and Ridley Scott\u2019s historical drama \u201cNapoleon.\u201d \t \tBox office experts believe the rebound in attendance is thanks to effective counterprogramming \u2014 and notably of movies that audiences actually wanted to watch in theaters. \u201cMoana 2\u201d brought out families in droves while \u201cWicked\u201d appealed to women old and young, and \u201cGladiator II\u201d mostly courted men of all ages. For a while, one-off successes like March\u2019s \u201cDune: Part Two,\u201d June\u2019s \u201cInside Out 2\u201d and July\u2019s \u201cDespicable Me 4\u201d and \u201cDeadpool & Wolverine\u201d were steamrolling the movie theater landscape. (\u201cBarbenheimer,\u201d the nickname for last year\u2019s phenomenon of back-to-back screenings of \u201cBarbie\u201d and \u201cOppenheimer,\u201d was more the exception than the rule.) So it\u2019s 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. \t\t\t \t\t\tPopular on Variety\t\t \t \t\t \t \t\u201cSince the pandemic, we\u2019ve 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,\u201d says Disney\u2019s head of global theatrical distribution Tony Chambers. \tDisney\u2019s sequel to 2016\u2019s \u201cMoana,\u201d 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\u00a0the biggest Thanksgiving frame by a nautical mile, overtaking 2019\u2019s Disney sequel \u201cFrozen II\u201d ($125 million over the five days) and 2013\u2019s \u201cHunger Games: Catching Fire\u201d ($109 million over the five days). \t \tUniversal\u2019s big-budget adaptation of the musical \u201cWicked\u201d wasn\u2019t 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. \u201cGladiator II\u201d 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%. \t\u201cIt\u2019s an encouraging sign that if you have the perfect combination of films at the right time, the marketplace will expand to accommodate them,\u201d says senior Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. \u201cThis 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.\u201d \tHollywood 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\u2019s dual labor strikes halted production and pushed major movies into 2025 and beyond. Sony\u2019s R-rated comic book adaptation \u201cKraven the Hunter\u201d and the Warner Bros. animated \u201cLord of the Rings\u201d spinoff \u201cThe War of the Rohirrim\u201d (both on Dec. 13) are two of the only wide releases on the schedule until Christmas. Then, there\u2019s Disney\u2019s \u201cThe Lion King\u201d prequel \u201cMufasa\u201d and Paramount\u2019s \u201cSonic the Hedgehog 3\u201d (on Dec. 20) and the Focus Features remake of \u201cNosferatu\u201d (Dec. 25), as well as a smattering of arthouse offerings like A24\u2019s erotic thriller \u201cBabygirl\u201d and Searchlight\u2019s Timothee Chalamet-led Bob Dylan biopic \u201cA Complete Unknown.\u201d Any of those could surprise, but none are guaranteed billion-dollar behemoths, in the vein of \u201cAvatar,\u201d \u201cStar Wars\u201d or \u2018\u201cSpider-Man,\u201d with enough gusto to close out the year and power the first few weeks of 2025. \t\u201cThanksgiving moviegoing is shattering records. It\u2019s an enormous lift,\u201d says David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. \u201cIs 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\u2019ll see how complete the recovery will be.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A trio of blockbusters \u2014 \u201cMoana 2,\u201d \u201cWicked\u201d and \u201cGladiator II\u201d \u2014 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\u2019s slate of \u201cRalph Breaks the Internet,\u201d \u201cFantastic […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36860,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-36858","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-film"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36858","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36858"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36858\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36860"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36858"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36858"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieetv.com\/ita\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36858"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}