A good old-fashioned box office fight is brewing.
Disney’s “Wish,” an animated adventure that was expected to dominate the Thanksgiving holiday, is taking on Lionsgate’s “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” for the top spot over the five-day stretch get hold of. And the dystopian prequel, currently in its second week of release, shows impressive family film resilience. In addition, “Napoleon” from Apple Original Productions exceeds initial estimates and can compete with the other two, more commercially oriented films.
Well, that’s the good news. The bad thing is that neither “Wish” nor “Napoleon” perform like the Thanksgiving blockbusters of yore, and the Disney film looks like another box office hit for a studio that had previously enjoyed an unprecedented success story. “Wish” earned a disappointing $3.9 million on Thanksgiving, bringing its total to $12.2 million. It is expected to generate $35 million within the five-day period.
That probably won’t be enough to top the second week of “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” which brought in $5.9 million on Thanksgiving, increasing its domestic cume to $69.6 million. The Hunger Games prequel, set before the arrival of Katniss Everdeen, is expected to gross $42 million in five days. The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes cost $100 million to produce, a relative bargain in this budget-busting era. In contrast, Disney spent $200 million producing “Wish.” In order to make a profit, the film has to show a certain persistence. If “The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” manages to dislodge “Wish” from the box office throne, it would be a big surprise. The only thing going for “Wish” is that recent animated films like Disney and Pixar’s “Elemental” started slowly and managed to catch on.
“Napoleon,” a lavish epic from Ridley Scott, a master of the genre whose previous films include “Gladiator” and “Kingdom of Heaven,” also cost $200 million to reach the screen (Waterloo isn’t cheap ). The film earned $4.4 million on Thanksgiving for second place and is expected to gross $33 million over the five-day holiday season to finish in third place. The film is expected to gross more than $70 million worldwide this week. A traditional studio would be scratching its head over the financial results of “Napoleon,” but Apple — with a market cap of nearly $3 trillion — isn’t too concerned with making a profit on the film. The film is being released theatrically to build anticipation for its inevitable launch on Apple TV+, the tech giant’s Netflix challenger. Sony Pictures is distributing the film, which stars Joaquin Phoenix as a very moody military genius and Vanessa Kirby as the woman whose love inspires him to conquer much of Europe – millions of victims be damned.
Universal and DreamWorks Animation’s “Trolls Band Together” placed fourth, earning $2.6 million on Thanksgiving. The family film was expected to gross $23.2 million in five days, bringing its domestic total to just over $62 million. TriStar Pictures and Spyglass Media’s “Thanksgiving,” a new holiday-themed gore fest from Eli Roth, collected $2 million on Thanksgiving, bringing its U.S. total to $16.9 million. The company is expected to earn $10 million over the long holiday season, translating to a gross domestic product of $23.1 million.
This Thanksgiving period is expected to result in $1 million in ticket sales, the highest since Covid upended the movie theater business. However, it’s a far cry from the $315.6 million high set in 2018, when “Ralph Breaks the Internet” and “Creed II” drew crowds.