Friday Box Office Analysis

By Kim Hollis

November 30, 2019

Anna makes all the friends.

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Thanksgiving and Black Friday brought the bounty of the box office. Disney reigns supreme again, and likely will for most of the weekends remaining in 2019. The movie distribution landscape has shifted in a big, significant way, one that has allowed a single studio to be the primary dominating force.

Frozen II will be our repeat champion for the weekend, as it declined just 19 percent yesterday from its debut Friday. (Note that if you take out Thursday sneaks, it actually increased.) Its total yesterday of $34 million beats the original film's debut weekend, which took place over the same calendar configuration for Thanksgiving in 2013 (with the difference being that it expanded to wide release on Thanksgiving weekend, while the sequel started in wide release the weekend prior to the holiday).

If it follows a similar trajectory to the original Frozen over Thanksgiving, and it should, Frozen II should come in with a fabulous three-day total of $102 million, and a five-day holiday total of $140.5 million. As we all know, though, Disney tends to estimate super low. I think it's reasonable to expect them to go with about $95 million for the three-day portion of the weekend instead. It's all good, regardless. Frozen II is making buckets of money.

Second place will go to the terrific family mystery Knives Out, which earned $10.7 million yesterday and has a tally of $25.4 million thus far. It should manage about $27 million for the three-day portion of the weekend. Considering it had a budget of $40 million, it's going to be a huge success for Lionsgate. Given the fabulous reviews and audience reaction, it should play well throughout the holiday season.




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Third goes to another critical and audience favorite, Ford v Ferrari. The certain Oscar contender added another $5.4 million yesterday, an increase of 20 percent over its previous Friday. It's got a great shot at $20 million over three days and will be approaching $100 million pretty quickly.

Another fan favorite (A Cinemascore) and critical darling, A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood also saw an increase from last Friday. With $5 million yesterday, it's headed up toward around $18 million or so. Tom Hanks is getting a lot of Supporting Actor attention for his portrayal of Fred Rogers here, and that kind of attention is obviously helping.

The other new Thanksgiving release, Queen & Slim, earned $4.3 million yesterday and has a grand total of $8.4 million since it debuted on Wednesday. This one also has solid reviews and audience scores, and will likely earn about $11 million for the three-day portion of the weekend. It had a slender budget of $20 million or so, which means it should eventually turn a bit of a profit.

Stay tuned for The Void, which arrives next weekend. However, at least one good film does seem to be debuting in the form of the Eddie Redmayne/Felicity Jones not-quite-steampunk adventure, The Aeronauts.


     


 
 

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