Box Office Report: At Waterloo, Disney Did Surrender

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 27, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | November 27, 2023 |

Thanksgiving Weekend is typically a busy period for cinemas. It’s the holidays, people get together with their families, and going to see a movie is a tried-and-true way to satisfy a throng of people bound by blood and not much else. We had a big Disney movie and a historical epic vying for the top spot, but it was last week’s top grosser that retained the number one spot.

The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has benefitted from good word-of-mouth and online buzz, which helped it earn and extra $28.8 million over the weekend. That brings its total domestic gross to over $98.3 million, which is about $21.5 million more than The Marvels has made in three weeks.

In the battle for Disney versus Ridley Scott, England’s saltiest sir won. Napoleon received decent reviews more than raves, but sometimes you just need a good dad movie. It earned $32.5 million over the five-day weekend, and its total worldwide gross is $78.8 million. This epic cost over $200 million, which was covered by Apple, and it will go to streaming soon. I’ve seen some writing it off as a flop already, as they did with another Apple TV+ exclusive, Killers of the Flower Moon. I imagine the ghost of Steve Jobs was hoping for a nine-figure opening weekend, but an R-rated historical drama running over two and a half hours doing this solidly is nothing to sneeze at. For the tech giant, the subscription numbers will probably matter more. And it won’t hurt to brag that they beat Disney.

Speaking of the House of Mouse, their latest original animated movie Wish did not do well at all. It debuted at number three with only $31.7 million from that five-day weekend. That’s not as bad as the studio’s big 2022 flop Strange World (which made $18 million through the five days), but it’s hard to escape how bad this looks for the company, coupled with The Marvels seriously under-performing. Really, I’m not sure Disney has anyone but themselves to blame. They’ve conditioned their target demographics to view their own works as at-home experiences. Shoving so many exclusives onto Disney+ (then deleting them when the numbers weren’t good enough) has made an impact. A ton of great movies, like Turning Red, were treated as secondary by their own studio. I also question how thorough the marketing for Wish was. Even with SAG-AFTRA strike stuff on the side, it seems as though this particular movie was particularly undersold. Whatever the case, Disney has a lot of thinking to do. I’m sure they’ll make good decisions and not double down on their bullsh*t.

As it expanded into 1,566 theatres, Saltburn did very well with audiences and saw a 437% increase in its weekend gross. That and Alexander Payne’s The Holdovers proved to be good indie counter-programming over the Turkey Day weekend. The only new limited release of the weekend was the French romantic drama Menus Plaisirs - Les Troisgros, which earned $6,500 from one location.

This coming week sees the release of Christmas-themed revenge thriller Silent Night, the return of our favourite Japanese lizard in Godzilla Minus One, and the one and only Renaissance by Beyoncé.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.