‘Zootopia 2’ To Uncage $270M Around The World; Thanksgiving U.S. Box Office Stretch Looks To Rank Behind Last Year’s Record

No, Thanksgiving isn’t a holiday in the rest of the world, but you’d think it would be as we’re in for another box office stretch for the record books as the opening Disney’s Zootopia 2 and the second weekend combined of Universal’s Wicked: For Good are bound to send the domestic box office to arguably the second best Thanksgiving 5-day stretch after last year’s holiday Wednesday-Sunday record of $424.9M.

Remember that was off a combo of Disney’s Moana 2 and Universal’s Wicked, two very heavy female leaning tentpoles that didn’t cancel each other out. Currently, the 2018 Thanksgiving stretch ranks as second best with $315.6M which was led by Ralph Breaks the Internet (and posted $84.7M over five days).

After returning to form last year at the Thanksgiving box office with a mega franchise in Moana 2 after post Covid misfires Wish and Strange World, the Mouse House has no plans to drop the ball as its highly anticipated Zootopia 2 is looking at a domestic take of $125M over Wednesday-Sunday with another $135M-$145M from a 93% offshore footprint for a massive global debut of $270M on the high-end. All territories are going except for Japan on Dec. 5 with China as always being the wild card. We do expect China to be bigger than the first time around when the original movie grew week over week.

That’s the biggest opening we’ve had in a while for an animated movie this year. Stateside, over 5-days, Zootopia 2 will rank as the second biggest Thanksgiving 5-day opener after Moana 2‘s mammoth $225.4M. Moana 2‘s global start last year was $389.3M.

Zootopia 2 is playing at 4,000 theatres in North American, including 415 Imax auditoriums, 950 Premium Large Format screens, 2,300 3D screens, 300 D-Box/4D motion screens and 125 ScreenX locations. We’re told that the Jason Bateman-Ginnifer Goodwin voiced sequel will share Imax screens with Glinda and Elphaba, the duo taking over evening showtimes. Advance tickets sales in the states are around $20M, which is in line with Inside Out 2 (that movie posted a $154.2M 3-day, $295M global opening, unadjusted for inflation). Previews start today at 2PM.

On Wednesday, Zootopia 2 goes in Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Rep, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan. This is followed by
Argentina, Australia, Bolivia, Brazil, Central America, Chile, Colombia, Croatia, Denmark, Ecuador, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Thailand, UAE, Ukraine, Uruguay on Thursday; and Finland, India, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, UK, and Vietnam on Friday.

What of Wicked: For Good? The Cynthia Erivo-Ariana Grande movie will continue to fly. Yesterday, the movie posted the best non-holiday Monday year-to-date at the box office with $14.8M. Though under Wicked‘s first Monday of $15.7M, the hope is to emulate what the first installment did over Thanksgiving last year, this being a combination of the sequel having a better start ($147M vs. $112.5M) than the first one, and also the heavy female audience, which is only 29% guys. Last year, Wicked posted a 5-day of $118.2M and 3-day of $81.1M.

Also opening on Wednesday in U.S./Canada is A24’s Eternity at 1,000 theaters and Focus Features’ limited release of Oscar winner Chloe Zhao’s British period drama Hamnet in 100 sites.