For Good’ with $156 million at box office

If Wicked: For Good was going to fall from box office grace after only one week at the top spot, at least Elphaba will be glad that it was because of a bunch of talking animals.

Zootopia 2 ran wild at the box office this Thanksgiving weekend, topping the domestic chart with $156 million (including Wednesday and Thursday previews) and the international chart with $400 million, making for a staggering cumulative premiere gross of $556 million globally, per Comscore.

That represented a decisive victory against its big sequel competitor, which would have run roughshod over any other new release this season. Wicked: For Good still fared quite well, conjuring up a bounteous $62.8 million in its second weekend domestically ($93 million when expanded to five days). That makes for a 57 percent drop from its $150 million premiere last weekend, but there’s no doubt this film has legs that will confidently walk it all the way through the holidays.

Featuring the voices of stars like Shakira, Quinta Brunson, and Macaulay Culkin, Zootopia 2 likely performed so exceedingly well due to the relative recent dearth of family films on the release calendar. Before this weekend, the only studio to release animated family fare into theaters this month was Universal, and it was a limited, 25th anniversary re-release of 2000’s Chicken Run.

Zootopia 2 not only bested Wicked‘s thrillifying conclusion at the box office this weekend, but it far surpassed the proceeds from its predecessor’s premiere. Zootopia opened to $75 million in 2016. Even taking out the preview revenue, Zootopia 2 still earned $96.8 million at the Thanksgiving box office. With a global start in excess of half a million, the sequel is on track to blow past the first film’s global end-run of $1 billion.

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Elsewhere on the domestic and global charts, two holdovers proved their staying power.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t held fast to the No. 3 spot domestically with a week three take of $7 million, dropping only 22 percent from last week. That’s after a reduction of 311 screens, too. In No. 4, Predator Badlands turned in a remarkably similar performance, dropping only 27 percent in week four with a $4.8 million take, but adding up to $85 million cumulatively, where the illusionist thriller threequel currently boasts $49.6 million overall at the domestic box office.

In the weekend’s other new premieres, A24’s afterlife rom-com Eternity scored a strong $5.2 million on its estimated $2 million budget, and Chloe Zhao’s Oscar hopeful Hamnet earned $1.3 million in its one-weekend limited release.

Next week, Zootopia 2 and Wicked: For Good will likely block any would-be usurpers at the box office.

Hamnet opens wide, but given its scaling, subject matter, and targeting of awards voters, rather than general audiences, the chances of it leaping to No. 1 are virtually impossible. What may stand a chance, albeit a slim one, is Universal and Blumhouse’s Five Nights at Freddy’s 2.

The animatronic horror with a slight bend towards kids arrives in the long shadow cast by the first film’s gangbusters debut. In 2023, Five Nights at Freddy’s became a Halloween weekend hit with an $80 million premiere, resulting in a lifetime global gross of $291.5 million. Box office watchers will have to wait to find out if horror is the correct wedge to disrupt what looks from here to be Wicked and Zootopia‘s assured dominance in the first weekend of December.