Battle at the Box Office 11/29/21
Encanto, the latest from Walt Disney Animation, led the Thanksgiving weekend box office with House of Gucci putting up a strong opening.
Encanto took in $27 million for the weekend and $40.3 million since last Wednesday when it opened. It’s a solid debut all things considered although obviously nowhere near the heights of past Thanksgiving Disney juggernauts like Frozen 2. It was about $8 million behind Jungle Cruise’s opening over the summer and $21 million more than Raya and the Last Dragon, which opened when theaters were just barely beginning to reopen and had a hybrid Disney+ release. Encanto has $63.8 million total worldwide so far.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife dropped to second with $24.2 million for the weekend and many analysts believed that it and Encanto split the family audience, preventing one or the other from being a runaway hit over Thanksgiving. Ghostbusters has $87.5 million so far for two weeks out and $103.6 million for a worldwide total.
House of Gucci took third place with $14.2 million for the weekend and $21.8 million for the five days of release. It’s a much brighter note for director Ridley Scott than his recent The Last Duel, which was a box office disaster even by pandemic standards and House of Gucci has already surpassed The Last Duel’s entire worldwide gross in one weekend with $34.7 million worldwide. House of Gucci is one of the strongest debuts recently aimed at older audiences, who have been much slower to return to theaters than younger and family audiences.
Eternals and Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City rounded out the top 5, although unofficial numbers at Clifford at possibly fifth place. Resident Evil opened to $5.3 million for the weekend and $8.8 million for the five days of release. That’s about $8 million off from the lowest opening Milla Jovovich Resident Evil movie, The Final Chapter, which opened to $13.6 million back in 2017.
Licorice Pizza, the latest from Paul Thomas Anderson which opened in four theaters had the best Per Theater average with $86,289 for each theater and $345,157 total.