“Zootopia 2” topped the Thanksgiving box office on Thursday with $19.7 million. Disney’s animated sequel has grossed a whopping $59.2 million domestically since its Tuesday night release, and is expected to collect between $140 million and $150 million during the five-day holiday period.
And audiences continue to fall under the spell of Elphaba and Glinda, with “Wicked: For Good” coming in second place on Thursday with $12.6 million. The film grossed a whopping $207.2 million in less than a week after its theatrical release. “Wicked: For Good” is on track to earn more than $90 million at the box office during the five-day holiday and just under $270 million domestically.
These two films have been huge box office hits that were in desperate need of a reset. Ticket sales in October fell to their lowest level in 30 years as films such as “Smashing Machines”, “Tron: Ares” and “Kiss of the Spider-Woman” flopped, and big-budget releases such as “One Battle After Another” failed to justify their high costs.
Even though “Zootopia 2” has proven to be a huge commercial hit, its box office receipts are expected to fall short of the records set by another Disney film, 2024’s “Moana 2,” which brought in $139 million in its traditional weekend and $225 million in five days. Notable Thanksgiving openings in the past include Disney’s 2019 sequel “Frozen II” ($125 million in five days) and 2013’s “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire” ($109 million in five days).
The second film, Zootopia, dominated the international box office, grossing $74 million, with worldwide box office receipts reaching a respectable $133.2 million. It is expected to collect an additional $135 million to $145 million from overseas markets in the first five days of release. The film has performed particularly well in China, where Zootopialand recently debuted at Shanghai Disneyland. The film grossed more than $54 million in its first two days in theaters, making it one of the few Hollywood films to make a splash at the Chinese box office since the coronavirus outbreak. As tensions with the United States escalate, China has turned to local-language productions instead.
Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard, Zootopia 2 follows a rabbit police officer (Ginnifer Goodwin) and a con artist fox (Jason Bateman) who reunite to hunt down a mysterious new reptilian resident (Kay Hui Quan).
Among independent films, A24’s Eternity, a romantic comedy set in the afterlife starring Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner, grossed $616,272 on 1,348 screens for a domestic box office total of $2.1 million, while Focus Features’ Hamnet, about the death of William Shakespeare’s son, led the way with $160,000 from 160 locations. The total amount will be $480,000. “Hamnet” is considered an Oscar frontrunner, with critics lavishing praise on the film, directed by Chloé Zhao and starring Jesse Buckley and Paul Mescal.
