Box Office: Walt Disney's 'Moana' Sets Sail With $81M Thanksgiving Debut

Walt Disney now owns nine of the top ten Thanksgiving debuts of all time. Now, to be fair, the Thanksgiving weekend has often been dominated (or at least topped) by the second weekend of a given Harry Potter/Twilight/Hunger Games offering going back to 2001. But regarding opening weekends, the Mouse House has 13 of the top 17 Thanksgiving

weekend openings, with films going back as far as the first Toy Story back in 1995. Non-Disney offerings are Four Christmases ($46 million in 2008), Back to the Future part II ($45m way back in 1989 which would be around $93m today), last year’s Creed ($42m), and DreamWorks Animation’s The Penguins of Madagascar ($35m in 2014). So, while Moana didn’t quite top Frozen’s all-time Turkey Day weekend debut, it carried on the long tradition of Disney offerings kicking butt on this kid-friendly holiday weekend.

Moana earned $55.5 million over its Fri-Sun debut and $81.1m Wed-Sun frame. The film was (comparatively) frontloaded in its first two days, which is why the ranking is out of whack. To wit, it is the second-biggest Wed-Sun Thanksgiving opening between Frozen ($93.5m in 2013) and Toy Story 2 ($80.1m). Regarding Fri-Sun openings on this date, it is below the $67.3m Frozenfigure and the $57.3m Toy Story 2 debut. Moana is sixth among all Wed-Sun Thanksgiving weekends, behind Catching Fire ($109m), Frozen ($93.5m), Mockingjay part I ($82.6m), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ($82.3m) and Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire ($81.2m). Among Fri-Sun weekends on this holiday, it is also sixth, behind Catching Fire ($74.1m), Frozen($67.3m), Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ($57.4m), Toy Story 2 ($57.3m) and Mockingjay part I ($56.9m).

Regarding multipliers and the like, Moana had a 5.17x five-day multiplier, which is frontloaded for a Thanksgiving weekend animated opener and includes a record-breaking Thanksgiving opening day of $15.58m. It also earned 3.2x of its five-day weekend via that record-breaking $2.6m Tuesday preview gross. Moana made more of its money via upfront demand than is normal for a family-friendly toon. Does that mean anything in the long run?  Presumably not, only that Disney toons in the post-Frozen era are more of an “everyone is excited” blockbuster as they were during the Waking Sleeping Beauty era. The audience response has been rapturous, and there is very little family-friendly competition between now and Rogue One or possibly (depending on how harsh the Star Wars Story is) Illumination’s Sing.

I saw that Universal/Comcast Corp. animated offering yesterday and, my own thoughts notwithstanding, it played very well to a packed audience of kids and families. But Sing opens on Dec. 21, by which time Moana will have presumably made much of its money in North America. No, we’re probably not looking at a Frozen multiplier, both because Moana wasn’t a surprise zeitgeist-capturing powerhouse and there is more family-friendly fare this time out than there was in 2013. If you recall, Dec. of 2013 had the ultraviolent The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and the “really for adults” dramas The Secret Life of Walter Mitty and Saving Mr. Banks as the big Christmas movies. And since Hunger Games: Catching Fire wasn’t exactly appropriate for the young kids, it was Frozen or nothing between Nov. 27, 2013 and Jan. 17, 2014 for children.

Assuming Rogue One is kid-friendly enough, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them brought in some more families/kids this weekend (it’s still playing primarily to adult fans), and Singbecomes another Illumination powerhouse, Moana will probably play like a “normal” Thanksgiving animated hit. So, what does that mean?  With the caveat that every movie performs a little differently and Walt Disney animated films (including The Jungle Book) have had crazy good multipliers this year, we’re probably looking at something between The Good Dinosaur/Treasure Planet (2.22x-2.3x) and A Bug’s Life (3.5x). Obviously, last year’s Pixar whiff is the worst-case scenario, but it would still leave the film with an okay $180-$186m domestic. The high end would give the film a whopping $284m domestic. The middle ground, think Tangled/Toy Story 2 (2.92x-3.06x) gives the $150m toon a $237-$248m domestic total.

The big variables are going to be the utter lack of newbie competition over the next two weeks, especially kids fare, and whether Moana clicks as more than just another good Disney toon. If Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc.’s Fantastic Beasts, which had a superb second-weekend hold, continues to play more to adults than kids, then Moana is more “the only game in town” for a few weeks. Yes, I think the whole “kick-ass female protagonist’s heroes journey” thing still matters in a marketplace where such things are still comparatively rare. I think the film’s quality and its worth as a poignant piece of female-centric mythmaking will make it resonate more than, say, The Good Dinosaur or even Bolt, but we’ll see. Yes, we should still expect a significant second-weekend drop, as we did with Frozen, but the third weekend will be a big clue as to how far Moanawill go.

Oh, and it made $12.3 million in China and $16.3m overseas for a current $97.4m worldwide cume.