‘Zootopia 2’ Expected to Get Its Paws on $270M Global Debut

Box office watchers are expecting this year’s Thanksgiving holiday five-day global take to be the second biggest ever, just behind last year’s top record. A big bite of this will be taken by the popular animal crime fighters of Disney’s Zootopia 2, which is expected to hit $125M domestically and $135M-$145M from a 93% overseas run (with healthy presales reported from China, where the first Zootopia took a minute to warm up) for a high-end Wednesday-Sunday projection of $270M.

Zootopia 2 sees Byron Howard and Jared Bush return as directors after the Oscar-winning original, and sends Nick Wilde (Jason Bateman) and Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) navigating their new partnership on the animal metro’s police force as a new mystery slinks from the shadows in the scaly form of Gary De’Snake (Ke Huy Quan).

Anticipated as one of the top animated feature openings of the year, Zootopia 2‘s target would make it the second highest-grossing Thanksgiving five-day domestic launch after last year’s Moana 2, also from Disney, which kicked off with $225.4M stateside and $389.3M worldwide.

The other half of the dynamic new release duo powering this big box office weekend is Wicked: For Good (Universal); the first Wicked helped conjure last year’s record Thanksgiving run alongside Moana 2. The pair helped drive the five-day total to $424.9M. The current second-highest T-day take, expected to be overtaken, is $315.6M in 2018 led by Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet and its five-day opening of $84.7M.

Opening Wednesday, November 26 (previews starting today), Zootopia 2 is slated for 4,000 screens across North America, including bookings at 415 IMAX theaters, 950 Premium Large Format screens, 2,300 3D screens, 300 D-Box/4D motion screens and 125 ScreenX locations. Advance U.S. ticket sales are roughly $20M.

International markets debuting Zootopia 2 on Wednesday include Austria, Belgium, China, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Netherlands, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Sweden, Switzerland and Taiwan. Thursday, it heads to 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, U.A.E., Ukraine and Uruguay. And on Friday, hops to Finland, India, South Africa, Spain, Turkey, U.K. and and Vietnam.

[Source: Deadline]