The fall box office has been rough this year, and it inspired a decent level of panic. In the absence of flashy tentpoles, October yielded the worst domestic theatrical returns since 1997 (excluding 2020), and adult-targeted Oscar hopefuls were failing to connect left and right. Several factors contributed, including movies like Mortal Kombat 2 and Michael having moved away from their original slots there, but at a time when the industry was hoping to see the box office bounce back from the one-two punch of the pandemic and Hollywood strikes, it understandably inspired fears of that month becoming a new dead zone.
While it’ll take until next October to really assuage those concerns (or prove them right), Thanksgiving has changed the tone. According to Deadline, this past long weekend saw films gross a collective $299 million domestic, the holiday’s third-highest total ever. Zootopia 2 led the way with $158 million, second-highest ever behind last year’s Moana 2, but it was hardly the only one to do well.
Wicked: For Good performed well enough to stay in line with Wicked’s gross over this same frame last year. Now You See Me: Now You Don’t, Predator: Badlands, and The Running Man all enjoyed strong holds on their 3-day totals compared to the week before. A24’s Eternity opened over $5 million and is likely to expand in more theaters, while Hamnet began its life in limited release with the third-highest per-screen average of the weekend, behind only overall leaders Zootopia 2 and Wicked: For Good.
Why the box office revival? The holiday is undeniably important; people clearly still go to the movies this time of year. But it’s also important to note that Hollywood did something it arguably didn’t for much of October – deliver great movies.
Thanksgiving’s Movie Slate Gave Audiences What They Wanted
Of the many takes on the weak October thrown around, the one I find most compelling is that it ultimately came down to the movies themselves. The industry used to be generally more capable of getting solid returns out of bad or mediocre movies than is possible today. People simply have too much vying for their time these days; if something doesn’t pass the smell test, audiences won’t show up.
Good and bad are relative terms, of course, but I’m talking less about quality, per se, than delivering what audiences want to see. Though those do sometimes go hand-in-hand. Of last weekend’s box office top 10, only three movies had Rotten Tomatoes critics scores above 90%, but seven had audience scores across that threshold. None of the films were Rotten by either metric (though Now You See Me: Now You Don’t comes dangerously close with critics).
It’s too easy to sit behind a computer and say all that’s required for a healthy box office is a constant stream of