Disney logs a win - and a bomb - at Thanksgiving box office
A five-day weekend at the movies for the Thanksgiving holiday was disappointing from a historical perspective, but it did have its winners and losers - and both of those were Walt Disney (NYSE:DIS).
On the one hand, Marvel's Black Panther: Wakanda Forever drew $64M over the five days from Wednesday-Sunday, running its domestic take for three weeks in release to $367.7M, and a global take of $675.6M. That's enough to make the film already the sixth-best in domestic grosses for 2022, and imminently set to surpass another three movies (The Batman, Minions: The Rise of Gru, and Jurassic World Dominion).
That was the good news, though, as industrywide box office was just $133M over the five days, and only $93M over the three days (down week-over-week). And while Disney (DIS) also had the second-best performing film, that one ended up a major disappointment.
Strange World, the new animated release from Walt Disney Studios, flopped in grossing just $18.6M over the five days and just $11.9M over the usual three-day span.
That's low for Disney - discounting pandemic-era simultaneously streaming Raya and the Last Dragon, it's the Disney label's worst opening since 2011's Winnie the Pooh, Box Office Mojo notes - but it's particularly bad considering the rich budget for the movie, for which estimates range from $120M-$180M.
And it just crowded out an unusual in-theater release from Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX), Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery. The Daniel Craig film drew $13.3M for the five-day weekend and $9.4M over the traditional three-day weekend - and that will be about it, as the film leaves theaters Wednesday before reappearing on Netflix as a streaming exclusive for Christmas.
Rounding out the top five grosses, Devotion (NYSE:SONY) landed with $9M over the five days, while a second weekend of The Menu (DIS) brought $7.3M.
Those films may need to carry some water for a bit through a relatively lean part of the film release schedule; the next major splash is likely to come from Avatar: The Way of Water (DIS) on Dec. 16 - a sequel to the global top all-time grosser.
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