Moana 2 and Wicked Break Thanksgiving Weekend Box Office Records

Photo : X / @CineMundoUS

Disney’s movie Moana 2 had a big opening this Thanksgiving weekend, earning about $368 million worldwide by Sunday. This helped make the biggest movie ticket sales weekend ever in the U.S. and Canada.

Moana 2 is the second movie in the Moana series, with Auli'i Cravalho returning as Moana and Dwayne Johnson as Maui. They go on a journey to break a curse and bring people back together. The movie made $221 million in the U.S. alone, which is more than Frozen 2 made over the same weekend in 2019.

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This year, total movie ticket sales reached $420 million, breaking the old record of $315 million set in 2018. This is a big success for Hollywood, especially after the challenges caused by the pandemic and strikes by writers and actors last year.

Alan Bergman, a Disney leader, said that if a movie has a good story and humor, people will still go to theaters. These results show that people still enjoy seeing movies in theaters.

Another movie, Wicked, based on the popular Broadway show and telling the story before The Wizard of Oz, also made a lot of money. It earned $117.5 million over the weekend, bringing its total worldwide earnings to $359.2 million.

Gladiator II, a sequel to the famous movie Gladiator from 2000, made $44 million in the U.S. and earned $320 million worldwide.

Even though movie ticket sales in 2024 were about 11% lower than last year, the big Thanksgiving weekend helped close that gap. However, sales are still lower than they were before the pandemic, with 2024 sales about 24% lower than in 2019.

Paul Dergarabedian, a movie expert, said that the great results from this weekend will help keep movie sales strong in the next few weeks. He also mentioned that upcoming movies like Kraven the Hunter, Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Mufasa: The Lion King could help the movie industry do well this year.

This Thanksgiving weekend shows that movie theaters are doing better, and people still love to watch films on the big screen.