‘Zootopia 2’ feasts on Thanksgiving box office weekend with $156 million opening
UNIVERSAL PICTURES, WALT DISNEY PICTURES, LIONSGATE MOVIES, 20TH CENTURY STUDIOS, PARAMOUNT PICTURES, CNN
By Auzinea Bacon, CNN
(CNN) — Walt Disney Animation’s “Zootopia 2” and Universal’s Broadway musical adaptation “Wicked: For Good” delivered movie theaters a much-needed one-two punch for the holiday weekend box office.
“Zootopia 2” debuted on Wednesday, kicking off a five-day Thanksgiving opening weekend. Its $156 million estimated gross is the second-best five-day Thanksgiving debut, behind Disney’s animated adventure movie “Moana 2,” which opened in 2024 to $225 million domestically.
“Disney has made it an event that comes virtually every year over the Thanksgiving holiday,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Comscore. “Families just embraced (‘Zootopia 2’) in such a profound way.”
The end-of-year holiday season is as important to Hollywood as the highly lucrative summer season, especially when coming off of a historically bad October, noted Shawn Robbins, director of analytics at Fandango and founder of analytics firm Box Office Theory.
Hollywood stuck to its formula from last year, when a “Wicked” film and an animated sequel from Disney drew big audiences to theaters. Last weekend, “Wicked: For Good” beat expectations when it opened to $150 million. It raked in another $62.8 million Friday through Sunday, bringing its domestic total to $270.4 million.
“We’re getting spoiled by these last two years. It’s really hard to pull that off,” Robbins said. “It also goes to show the power of female-skewing films at the box office, because neither of these are male-driven blockbusters.”
Together, “Wicked: For Good” and “Zootopia 2” earned a combined $249 million domestically over the five days, according to Comscore data. “Zootopia 2” also earned $400 million internationally, bringing it to an estimated $556 million globally. And “Wicked: For Good” has earned $393.25 million globally since its debut.
The two films are more complementary than competitive, largely because the PG-rated movies appealed to family audiences and opened during two separate weekends, according to Dergarabedian.
“They did not really detract at all from each other … This performance was born out of having a perfectly curated, perfectly strategized release of these two movies,” he said.
Lionsgate Films’ “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” came in at No. 3, earning $7 million Friday through Sunday, followed by Disney’s “Predator: Badlands” ($4.8 million) and Paramount Pictures’ “The Running Man” ($3.7 million).
A24’s romantic comedy “Eternity” opened to a meager $5.2 million over the five-day weekend, notching the No. 6 spot overall.
Romantic comedies have dwindled in popularity at the box office in recent years, according to analysts. In 2009, there were 20 romantic comedy wide releases, compared with up to four annual releases today, according to David A. Gross, who publishes industry newsletter FranchiseRe.
At No. 8 this weekend was the opening of Focus Features’ “Hamnet” ($1.35 million). The historical drama detailing Shakespeare’s inspiration for the play “Hamlet” is considered a contender for Academy Award nominations.
Analysts are hopeful that Hollywood could rake in a whopping $9 billion at the domestic box office this year. The box office is currently up 1.24% year-to-date and would need another $1.2 billion to reach that milestone, according to Dergarabedian.
“The strength of the schedule overall still points to $9 billion being very, very likely,” said Robbins, who noted that the industry will either fall short or slightly above the $9 billion mark. It may largely rely on Disney’s “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” which opens on December 19.
The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2025 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
