The weather outside is getting colder, but things are heating up at the box office! Get it? GET IT?! Fine, let’s just say that Frozen II dominated the weekend frame, as expected, and set new records for Walt Disney as the highly-anticipated animated sequel crushed the competition (including Tom Hanks in a Mister Rogers movie) and grabbed that coveted Number One slot on the charts.
We have been waiting six years for the Frozen sequel to hit theaters, and fans showed up in droves to find out what happens with Anna (Kristen Bell) and Elsa (Idina Menzel) on the next steps of their adventures together. What’s crazy is that this isn’t even the Thanksgiving weekend, when families really pack the multiplexes, so we expect Frozen II to perform even better next weekend.
But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Here are this weekend’s box office numbers, courtesy of the-numbers.com.
| Movie Title | Weekend Amount | Total Amount | Chart Position Last Week | Number of Screens |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Frozen II | 127000000 | 127000000 | 0 | 4440 |
| Ford v Ferrari | 16000000 | 57989570 | 1 | 3528 |
| A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood | 13500000 | 13500000 | 0 | 3235 |
| 21 Bridges | 9300000 | 9300000 | 0 | 2665 |
| Midway | 4700000 | 43107561 | 2 | 2627 |
| Playing with Fire | 4615000 | 31621647 | 4 | 2760 |
| The Good Liar | 3375000 | 11765794 | 7 | 2454 |
| Charlie's Angels | 3175000 | 13940592 | 3 | 3452 |
| Last Christmas | 3040000 | 27792390 | 5 | 2411 |
| Joker | 2820000 | 326931813 | 8 | 1410 |
The other contenders this weekend did OK, and actually could celebrate a few small victories, if it wasn’t for the fact that they have to stand next to that $127M number posted by Frozen II. In comparison, you look a little lame.
But James Mangold’s Ford v Ferrari continues to build on some serious word of mouth, and likely will parlay that theatrical success into Oscar buzz, which could keep it profitable for weeks to come.
The same sort of buzz wasn’t there for A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood, which opened in third place and didn’t make that many waves due to its Disney competition. Maybe there was something to be said for that Jeopardy moment when the contestants couldn’t recognize Tom Hanks as Fred Rogers. Did the marketing for this movie not find its audience?
Elsewhere on the chart, a few major movies started to slip away. Charlie’s Angels and The Good Liar are fading, fast, while Midway continues to post strong numbers. Joker is a behemoth, crossing $325 million domestically. But Doctor Sleep dropped out of the Top 10, which is a stunning loss for that title. Seriously, folks, you will watch that movie on DVD later and wonder why you didn’t support it in the theater. This is why we can’t have nice things.
Next weekend, all bets are off. It’s Thanksgiving weekend, when the movie theaters thrive, and audiences pack the houses to see movies they need to catch up on. Could Knives Out cut into Frozen II then? See that I did there? C’MON PEOPLE! Work with me here!
