Thanksgiving is a time to hang out with your family, prepare for the Christmas chaos, eat lots of food, and apparently, go see a movie. Buckle up, box office nerds, we got a lot to talk about. Between “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” “Creed II,” “The Favourite,” “Venom,” “Green Book,” and “Robin Hood,” there’s no shortage of big stories from this weekend. So, let’s dive in, shall we?
First up, it would be a disservice to Disney if we didn’t talk about the monster opening for “Ralph Breaks the Internet,” aka ‘Wreck-It-Ralph 2.’ Debuting on Wednesday, ‘Ralph 2’ never slowed down throughout the weekend and earned a five-day holiday opening of $84.5 million ($55.6 million over three days). The easiest comparisons to put ‘Ralph 2’ in perspective is with other animated films that opened in the coveted Thanksgiving period. And when you compare to the likes of “Moana” ($84.4 million), “Tangled” ($70.5 million), and “Coco” ($73 million), it’s clear to see that Disney has yet another monster hit on its hands.
The film also debuted in some of the worldwide markets, pulling in an additional $41.5 million. That puts the total for ‘Ralph 2’ at $126 million after five days. Not too shabby at all.
But that doesn’t mean the rest of the box office suffered. No, no, no. There was plenty of box office pie to share with the family this weekend. This love was felt in an equally impressive way by “Creed II.”
The ‘Rocky’ franchise released its eighth movie, “Creed II,” to a knockout total. Debuting at #2 for the holiday weekend, “Creed II” raked in a great $56 million over five days ($35.3 million three-day weekend total). Obviously, when compared to the previous entries in the ‘Rocky’ franchise, “Creed II” debuted to a record total. Even if you just look at the three-day weekend, the $35.3 million would best the original “Creed” debut of $29.6 million. Considering the strong reviews and the anticipated holiday legs, there’s nothing stopping “Creed II” from topping all previous ‘Rocky’ films for the box office title.
Taking all the ‘Rocky’ history out of the equation, the Michael B. Jordan sequel secured the biggest Thanksgiving opening of all-time for a live-action film, easily surpassing the $49 million five-day total of “Enchanted.”
As mentioned above, these massive debuts are only part of the box office story this Thanksgiving. Because we have some more drama towards the bottom of the charts that deserves just as much attention. First, we have to once again talk about “Venom.” A couple weeks ago, we predicted that with a strong China theatrical run, the superhero film would be jumping past some big genre names. But even we didn’t expect this.
At the domestic box office, “Venom” only earned another $780,000. However, this weekend brought the Chinese box office total for the Spider-Man spin-off film to an astounding $242.9 million. With an international total of $610.8 million, combined with a current domestic total of $211.7 million, “Venom” now has a worldwide total of $822.5 million. So, where does that total rank “Venom” among the superhero big boys? Let’s take a look.
“Venom” now has a worldwide total bigger than “Wonder Woman.” Yes, that’s right, the Tom Hardy Marvel film with terrible reviews has passed the crown jewel of the WB/DC superhero universe. The film also narrowly passed Sam Raimi’s original “Spider-Man,” leaving “Spider-Man: Homecoming” ($880 million) and “Spider-Man 3” ($891 million) as the only Sony superhero films above “Venom.” As for non-sequel, superhero origin films, “Venom” now has the #2 spot behind only this year’s “Black Panther.” At this point, we’ll just have to sit back and see just how far “Venom” can climb.
Now, onto the bad news of the week — “Robin Hood.” Sometimes film studios make moves and it’s just mind-boggling to film fans. “Robin Hood” seems to be one of those projects. When the first trailer debuted for the action film, the collective social media reaction seemed to be “Why?” And unfortunately, Lionsgate just couldn’t answer that question through its marketing campaign. The film debuted at a disappointing #7 with a five-day holiday total of $14.2 million ($9 million three-day). When you consider the films’ reported budget of $100 million and the massive marketing dollars spent, “Robin Hood” is going to be one of the year’s biggest flops. “Robin Hood” seems to be a classic case of a remake no one wanted combining with terrible reviews and word-of-mouth, leading to box office disaster.
Moving onto box office story number 5 for the weekend, let’s take a look at how some of the specialty, prestige films did over Thanksgiving. The big news, at least in the top 10, is the wide-expansion of Oscar-contending drama “Green Book.” Expanding to over 1,000 theaters, the Viggo Mortensen and Mahershala Ali-starring film earned $7.4 million over the five-day holiday weekend ($5.4 million three-day), good for a #9 spot on the chart. While the numbers themselves aren’t completely shocking, the per-theater-average of $5,120 over the three-day weekend is worth mentioning. That puts “Green Book” at the 5th best PTA in the top 10, besting “Bohemian Rhapsody” and “Instant Family.”
We’ve said it before, “Green Book” is a crowd-pleasing film that never makes the audience feel uncomfortable, which is especially interesting considering the story of the film, which tackles the issue of racism. “Green Book” is definitely your Grandma’s favorite film of the Oscar season, which means it could have great legs throughout the upcoming weeks. This Christmas, it’ll be a safe bet you’ll hear something to the effect of, “Hey, you ever hear of that ‘Green Book’ movie? It’s so sweet and has such a good message!”
But the big, big news in the limited release, prestige category is Yorgos Lanthimos’ “The Favourite.” The highly-anticipated film, which should be yet another Oscar contender, debuted in 4 theaters this weekend and earned an incredible $105,000 average. To put that in perspective, the $420,000 three-day total for “The Favourite” bested “Beautiful Boy” (254 theaters), “The Girl in the Spider’s Tattoo” (983 theaters), and “The Hate U Give” (260 theaters). The $105,000 PTA ranks as the 24th best of all time, and is the best average since 2016’s “La La Land,” which had a ridiculous $176,221 per theater average.
The previous best for 2018 was the recent debut of Luca Guadagnino’s “Suspiria,” with a PTA of $92,019. But when you look at it this way, the PTA of “The Favourite” doesn’t necessarily guarantee an amazing box office run. “Suspiria” never caught on with audiences after its massive debut and has only earned $2.7 million worldwide to date. Obviously, Fox Searchlight is hoping “The Favourite” fares quite a bit better in the coming weeks.
And if you think that’s all we could talk about this weekend, you’re wrong. However, for the sake of your eyes and my fingers, we’re going to cut it short and not dive deep into the disaster that is “The Front Runner” (however, keep an eye out for a future article, as there’s something we need to discuss here) and how Mark Wahlberg was able to score a pretty great second weekend for his ridiculous family comedy, “Instant Family.”
Next week should be fairly uneventful, as the only major release is “The Possession of Hannah Grace.” Should be interesting to see how the rest of the stacked box office does with no real competition. See you in seven days!
Here’s the three-day totals for November 23 to November 25:
1. Ralph Breaks the Internet — $55.7M ($84.5M Overall)
2. Creed II — $35M ($55.8M)
3. The Grinch — $30M ($180M)
4. Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald — $29.6M ($117M)
5. Bohemian Rhapsody — $13.9M ($152M)
6. Instant Family — $12.5M ($35.7M)
7. Robin Hood — $9.1M ($14.2M)
8. Widows — $7.96M ($25.6M)
9. Green Book — $5.4M ($7.8M)
10. A Star is Born — $3M ($191M)