As predicted, Disney’s charming anthropomorphic animals/cop buddies served up a big cinematic feast at the box office this Thanksgiving weekend. Directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard, Zootopia 2 has brought int over $156 million from 4,000 venues since opening on Wednesday, Nov. 26, with an estimated $96.8 million over the regular weekend. This marks the second-best Thanksgiving opening of all time, falling just behind another sequel from Disney, last year’s Moana 2, which had a $225 million over the five-day Turkey weekend, and 2019’s Frozen II, which took in $125 million over the same time frame. The first Zootopia movie opened in March of 2016 and had a $75 million opening weekend, leading to a $341 U.S. box office and a $1.02 billion box-office globally.
The sequel also proved to be major force to be reckoned with globally, with a spectacular $400 million opening worldwide, and a record-setting $272 million in China. Zootopia 2’s $556 million total is the fourth-biggest opening weekend of all time.
Universal’s Wicked: For Good also continued to bring in audiences to theaters worldwide, with another $93 million in its second weekend of release, bringing its U.S. cume to $270.4 million in the U.S. and $393.3 million worldwide in its first ten days in theaters.
Zootopia 2 received great reviews (91% on Rotten Tomatoes and “A” grade on CinemaScore exit polls), and was the first major family movie released widely in theaters since DreamWorks’ The Bad Guys 2, which came out on August 1.) The next big animated tentpole is Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants, which opens on Dec. 19.
You can read our interview with the movie’s creative team here.
Sources: Deadline.com, Variety.com
