Friday Box Office: 'Moana 2' and 'Wicked Part One' Tower Over More Than A Dozen Small-Scale Post-Thanksgiving Newbies

This often barren post-holiday frame is enlivened by everyone wanting to be the next 'Godzilla: Minus One'. The closest thing was a reissue of Chris Nolan's 'Interstellar'

There are a dozen new releases this weekend, not even including Amy Adams’ Nightbitch. That Searchlight release is essentially dumped on 82 screens with no official reporting for what’s considered strictly an awards-qualifying run. Let’s see if this gets everyone as up in arms as they were over Juror No. 2 getting comparatively similar treatment from Warner Bros. Discovery last month. I’m guessing not, which is unfortunate since Clint Eastwood’s legal melodrama and Marielle Heller’s maternity passion play (review) are both rock-solid studio releases that, once upon a time, didn’t have to be “best of the year” contenders to break through the noise. But I digress.

The lack of major studio offerings in the post-Thanksgiving slot gave the likes of Godzilla: Minus One and Renaissance: A Film by Beyonce a chance to break out accordingly. Now it seems that everyone is trying that. And I mean everyone… almost every sub-genre of “demographically specific event film” got their turn at bat this weekend. However, to paraphrase a wise bad guy, when everyone’s special no one is.

We’ve got… just a sample… a Tollywood epic (Pushpa: The Rule - Part 2), a Sony/Crunchyroll anime (Solo Leveling: Reawakening), the tenth-anniversary rerelease of Chris Nolan’s Interstellar, an A24 apocalypse comedy (Y2K), a faith-based concert flick (For King+Country’s a Drummer Boy Christmas), another concert flick (Lauffey’s A Night a the Sympohy: Hollywood Bowl), a theatrical release for a long-time straight-to-video genre vet (Steven C. Miller’s Werewolves), the 603-theater debut of Jude Law’s “undercover cop versus white supremacists” thriller The Order and Trailer Park Boys: Standing on the Shoulders of Kitties.

Did any of these films actually perform? Well, Sukumar’s 195-minute epic placed second on Thursday with a $4.7 million opening day followed by a $1.72 million Friday for what should be a $9.8 million Thurs-Sun weekend. That seems to be the pattern with most big-deal Bollywood, Kollywood or Tollywood domestic debuts (think last summer’s Kalkia 2898 AD), even if the Allu Arjun-starring flick is kicking butt in India, including the biggest Hindi opening day of all time, with an estimated global debut of around Rs. 700 crore which I think is $83 million.

Paramount’s domestic reissue of Interstellar, remember that they traded overseas distribution to Warner Bros. in 2014 in exchange for getting back South Park and Friday the 13th (uh…), earned $1.37 million in 165 theaters. That sets the stage for a $4 million weekend and $24,606 per-theater average, bumping its lifetime cume to $193 million domestic and (counting a $20 million reissue in the summer of 2024 and another $27 million overseas thus far for this current reissue) $736 million worldwide. Nice try, Interstellar, but thanks to its own overseas reissues (assuming Box Office Mojo isn’t yanking my chain), Gravity has gone from $724 million in 2013 to $774 million over its lifetime.

But otherwise, it was mostly a case of “It’s an honor just to be in theaters.” Kyle Mooney’s Y2K (review), probably the most high-profile newbie (at least for mainstream Hollywood) of the weekend by default, earned $923,000 yesterday for a likely over/under $2.4 million weekend. Solo Leveling: The Awakening will earn around $2.3 million this weekend while the two concert flicks will gross $3.7 million combined.

Werewolves, starring Frank Grillo as a guy dealing with what’s become an annual “tons of folks turn into werewolves” situation, will gross $1 million this weekend courtesy of Briarcliff in 1,351 theaters (I might be able to convince my wife to check that one out tonight depending on how pooped she is after her mother/daughter tea event), and Vertical’s The Order will earn around $640,000. All told, these dozen newbies of all shapes and sizes will earn around $18 million combined, with $13 million from the Tollywood flick, the anime movie and the 10th-anniversary reissue, playing in 9,763 theaters.

That’s less combined than Moana ($11.7 million) and Wicked Part One ($9.6 million) earned last night, but it’s also $18 million in revenue that theaters otherwise would not have had. It’s part of why this is the biggest “post-Thanksgiving weekend” cume ever (sans inflation), with around $129 million in total among all films in play. That’s +42% from this frame in 2019 (when Frozen II and Knives Out essentially deadlifted the multiplexes).

Of course, Hollywood rarely learns the lesson of Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai (which opened with $25 million on this frame in 2003 and legged out to $111 million domestically and $455 million worldwide) by dropping a biggie just after Thanksgiving. The good news is that Universal seems to be at least trying that with the likely “cheap but huge” Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 dropping on December 5, 2025. Not knowing the game lore, but noting Universal’s genre-specific success in this frame with Krampus in 2015 and Silent Night in 2022, I’d still wager that Mr. Fazbear might want to make sure his Santa Claus suit still fits.

In holdover news, Moana 2 was tops again with $11.4 million (-79%) for a likely $50.4 million (-64%) weekend and $298 million 12-day domestic total. With the caveat that these are big numbers and that Moana 2 nearly tripled the prior Wed-Sun Thanksgiving opening weekend record, that Friday drop is on par with the likes of Wish (-80%), Strange World (-78%), The Good Dinosaur (-78%), Frozen II (-77% for what was its third Friday) than the leggier likes of Tangled (-74%), Frozen (-75%), Moana (-70%), Coco (-66%), Ralph Breaks the Internet (-74%) and Encanto (-72%). Ditto, that likely 64% weekend drop, which is the biggest post-Thanksgiving drop for a Disney toon opener on record.

It’ll probably have around $550 million worldwide by Sunday night. Furthermore, even if it legs out like Wish (-60% in weekend two and 1.52x its ten-day total), it still passes $450 million domestically and (spitball math) $830 million worldwide. Still, at least in terms of legs thus far, this seems to be a case of “They came, they saw, they shrugged.” That said, I believe in Barry Jenkins, and I’m eagerly hoping that Mufasa will be closer in quality to Jon Favreau’s The Jungle Book than Jon Favreau’s The Lion King. Either way, I’m curious to what extent it will be the third version of Wicked since September, alongside Wicked Part One and Transformers One.

Universal’s Wicked Part One earned $9.55 million (-70%) on Friday. That sets the stage for a likely $33 million (-60%) third weekend and $318 million 17-day cume. However, among YA fantasy post-Thanksgiving drops, its Friday and weekend descents are more or less on par with the various Harry Potter flicks, Hunger Games sequels and Fantastic Beasts films. They are, for what it’s worth, worse than The Hunger Games: Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes (-64% on day 15 and -51% for weekend three) and How The Grinch Stole Christmas (-66% for day 15 but -48% on weekend three). Bemusingly, the otherwise massively frontloaded Twilight Saga sequels held with 60% drops in weekend three, but that will be “fun with math” for tomorrow.

Mea culpa, it’ll be a few more days until Wicked Part One passes Oppenheimer ($330 million) to become the biggest non-sequel/prequel domestic earner since Barbie last July. The $145 million fantasy musical should be just over/under $450 million worldwide by tomorrow night. Yes, it’s skewing domestically, but this is closer in spirit to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice ($295 million domestic and $455 million worldwide on a $100 million budget) than Twisters ($270 million/$370 million/$155 million). A $400 million domestic total is still in reach, but it might need a little Christmas magic (or Oscar nominations) to get there. It’s already the biggest non-Disney live-action musical in North America. We’ll see how close it gets to Mamma Mia! ($609 million in 2008) worldwide.

Paramount’s Gladiator II earned $1.37 million (-71%), showing an obvious gulf between the conquering musicals and everything else. That sets the stage for a likely $13.3 million (-57%) weekend and $133.6 million 17-day domestic total. The $250 million Ridley Scott-directed legacy sequel should be at around $390 million worldwide by tomorrow. Its domestic drop is on par with the 50-55% post-Thanksgiving drops for the various “opened in mid-November” Pierce Brosnan and Daniel Craig 007 movies, noting that Die Another Day fell 59% in its third frame in 2002. Legs on par would still give Gladiator II a $180 million domestic cume. Again, unless Kraven The Hunter surprises next weekend, Paul Mescal has the He-Man Action Hero sandbox to himself for a while.

Jake Kasdan’s Red One is the only other movie (alongside Interstellar) to earn over $1 million yesterday, with a $1.66 million (-66%) fourth Friday and likely $6.4 million (-50%) fourth weekend. That would give Amazon MGM Studios’ $250 million (priced for streaming, natch) release an $85 million 24-day cume. For reference, The Santa Clause dropped 44% on its fourth weekend (post-Thanksgiving), while The Santa Clause 2 dropped 56% on this frame (its sixth weekend) in 2002, and The Santa Clause 3 fell 51% on what was its fifth weekend in 2006. Dwayne Johnson and Chris Evans’ Christmas action comedy will end up somewhere between $99 million and $145 million, depending on its value as a seasonal consensus pick/family multiplex outing over the next three weeks.

Courtesy of The Numbers…