LOS ANGELES:
Thanksgiving often serves up a feast of new family movies at the box office, but the Walt Disney Co’s animated offering “Strange World ” fizzled with audiences out of the gates. The production, which carried a reported $180 million budget, grossed just $18.6 million in ticket sales in its first five days and $11.9 million over the weekend in North American theaters, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The top spot for the holiday corridor, which runs from Wednesday through Sunday, instead went to another Disney movie, Marvel’s “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever,” which raked in an additional $64 million over the last five days, $45.9 million of which was from the weekend. The superhero sequel has reigned over the charts for three weekends now and has grossed $675.6 million worldwide.
It was a muted weekend despite a buffet of well-reviewed options, including the Korean War aviation drama “Devotion,” the nationwide expansion of the Timothée Chalamet cannibal romance “Bones and All ” and Steven Spielberg’s “The Fabelmans.”
“Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery” also opened in 600 theaters nationwide for a weeklong limited run. It marks the first time a Netflix film has played in the nation’s major theater chains, including AMC, Regal and Cinemark, but neither Netflix nor the exhibitors provided sales estimates for the film, which won’t hit the streaming service until Dec 23. The first “Knives Out,” which was released by Lionsgate, opened to $41.4 million over Thanksgiving weekend in 2019.
Between the “Glass Onion” mystery and the “Strange World” miss, it was a reminder that the exhibition business is still far from normal.
“This was not pre-destined to be a blockbuster Thanksgiving weekend,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Comscore’s senior media analyst. He noted that the marketplace is still being impacted by the pandemic’s effects on Hollywood production and release schedules.
Disney has historically “owned” the Thanksgiving weekend. Walt Disney Studios and Pixar animated titles account for the top six Thanksgiving openings of all time, including films such as “Frozen,”