Moana 2, Wicked & Gladiator II Star at the Record-Breaking Thanksgiving Box Office
They said the theatrical Box Office was dead, that Covid killed it.
Well, hello, from Wednesday to Sunday, 30 million people saw the top three movies — Moana 2 (17.4M admissions), Wicked (8.7M) and Gladiator II (3.3M). Indeed, the Thanksgiving 5-day US Box Office hit an all-time holiday high of $420 million overall. More specifically, Moana 2 was setting a five-day opening and Thanksgiving record of $221M; Wicked became the highest grossing movie based on a Broadway musical and earning the third best five-day take of $117.5M, over Thanksgiving (with $263M so far overall); while Gladiator II is seeing $44M. Those three accounted for $382.5M total of that $420M overall B.O. take.
Yet, Jeff Goldblum, one of the co-stars of Wicked, who recently called his new movie, “funny and entertaining but also heart-wrenching,” also once described the randomness of success in the movie business this way: “The thing is, most movies won’t succeed. Most films don’t. It’s the dark secret nobody out there that most films don’t find an audience. So, you just keep on working and among the vast array of flops that you inevitably accumulate, you stay hopeful that maybe, every now and again, you might be associated with a hit.”
Well, Wicked is now firmly entrenched as part of that all-time Thanksgiving holiday high Box Office take. During the press tour for Wicked, Goldblum, who plays the Wonderful Wizard, further said of Wicked: “It’s larger than life, and it’s immersive because you feel like you’re flying with Elphaba and the monkeys. That’s part of the joy and transformational magic of watching the movie — with Alice Brooks’ cinematography and John M. Chu’s masterful directing — it really is a piece of art that you’ve got to see, and hear Steven Schwarz’s music and the voices of Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande.”
Goldblum, a purveyor of fine music himself as a jazz pianist, further waxes poetic about the two singing ladies: “Cynthia and Ariana are so good in this. They’ll both blow your mind. They sing up a storm. They’re deeply gifted. But they work hard. They’ve worked craft-wise for all these years. You know, it really is 99% perspiration, 1% inspiration. They put the work in. They were all devoted to this material. Get ready to enjoy these performers. If you’re a fan of Cynthia Erivo or Ariana Grande before, get ready because they take it to the next level.”
