It was a crowded table at the Thanksgiving box-office buffet this weekend, with four new movies jostling for a seat alongside the holdovers, and at the head of proceedings was Disney’s Encanto, although Jason Reitman’s blockbusting ghosts left a trail of slime very close behind it.
Encanto, which features the voice of Stephanie Beatriz and songs written by the omnipresent Lin-Manuel Miranda won a weekend traditionally taken by ‘The Mouse House’ with a $40.3M five-day bow. Disney’s Thanksgiving hot-streak features 2016’s Moana, 2017’s Coco, 2018’s Ralph Breaks the Internet, and 2019’s box-office behemoth Frozen II, and while Encanto got nowhere near the figures achieved by those favourites, there’s the tiresome caveat of a pandemic surge, plus the competition from another family film that’s performing above expectations.
Said film is Jason Reitman’s Ghostbusters: Afterlife, which dropped an impressive -44.3% for a five-day haul of $35.3M, meaning the Paul Rudd, Finn Wolfhard, Mckenna Grace, and Carrie Coon starring sequel has stored $87.8M in the domestic containment unit, while its global cume now stands at $115.8M.
Coming in third place was United Artists’ House of Gucci, which was a success story of a different kind, because not only was it an improvement on Ridley Scott’s last big screen outing The Last Duel, but its $21.8M five-day tally was the highest grossing adult-oriented drama of the pandemic era. Only time will tell whether this is a true reflection of a film where the reception has been mixed-at-best, or whether this is just Lady Gaga’s Little Monsters coming out to support the star on opening weekend.
Shuffling into the top-five with $8.8M was Screen Gems’ Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City, which potentially suffered cannibalisation from the likes of Ghostbusters, but is more likely to have struggled due to the crowded marketplace, coupled with brand fatigue from an audience who didn’t want to see yet another Resident Evil film.
Finally we have Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza (read our review ★★★★★ here), which played like gangbusters in limited release, breaking the pandemic era record set by C’mon C’mon with $84,000 per-screen, for a total of $336,000……from 4 screens! This kind of performance isn’t exactly unusual for a PTA film, but it’s still heartening to report such impressive statistics.
As always, the full chart can be found over at BoxOfficeMojo.
