Hollywood can look forward to Thanksgiving box office history repeating itself with a robust Wednesday-Sunday domestic opening expected from Disney‘s Zootopia 2 with $125M-plus. That result could make the sequel to the 2016 Disney original animation title the second-highest opening ever over the Thanksgiving box office behind last year’s Moana 2 ($225.4M) and possibly ahead of 2019’s Frozen 2 ($125M over its 5-day Thanksgiving period, the pic’s second frame).
Disney owns nine of the top 10 Thanksgiving 5-day openings.
Presales, we understand, are in line with Pixar’s Inside Out 2, which opened to $154.2M over three days in June 2024. Zootopia 2 is strong across the board, with males under 25 leading in first choice and females under 25 leading in unaided, but males under 25 and women over 25 are strong as well.
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Together with Universal’s Wicked: For Good, which will open in the pre-Thanksgiving weekend to around the same as the first with $112.5M (the highest ever for a feature take of a Broadway musical), the hope is that the overall November 26-30 holiday stretch will be robust enough for both studios and exhibition after a post-Labor Day period that has fallen behind 2024’s. Last year’s trio of Wicked, Moana 2 and Paramount’s Gladiator II fueled a record Thanksgiving five-day for all titles of $420M. It would take an overdriving performance by both Zootopia 2 and Wicked: For Good to get there.
In addition, the big question mark is what male adult IP fills the void of Gladiator II? That Ridley Scott-directed sequel opened to $55M in the pre-Thanksgiving slot and posted a Thanksgiving 5-day of $44.2M, ending its 10-day total at $111.4M. Can Paramount’s The Running Man and Lionsgate’s Now You See Me: Now You Don’t fill that gap? Both male-skewing titles open on November 14.
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In the Zootopia sequel directed by Jared Bush and Bryon Howard, brave rabbit cop Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her friend, the fox Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman), team up again to crack the most perilous and intricate case of their careers. The original 2016 movie, set in the titular city of anthropomorphic animals who are contending with their differences, won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature and opened to $75M stateside, and ending its run at $341.2M domestic, $1 billion global.
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