In terms of box office performance, American Thanksgiving has always been a bit of an oddball holiday “weekend.” Many people who had some spare time suddenly found themselves sitting in front of them; yet, there are also a lot of cultural messages suggesting that they should be spending that time with their “loved ones.”
Is it any surprise, then, that the film about being imprisoned in close quarters with a group of individuals you are then required by law to kill was the big box office hit this past weekend? The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes prevailed at the Thanksgiving box office, earning over $23 million this weekend, in spite of fresh opposition from Ridley Scott and the Disney machine. (That’s a rather minor second-week decline, considering the movie debuted at $44 million the previous week; granted, sales on Wednesday and Thursday because of the holiday are also included.)
Scott’s Joaquin Phoenix biopic Napoleon and, perhaps more surprise, Disney’s “That’s the sound of us scraping the very bottom of the IP barrel” entry Wish were both handily defeated by those statistics. The latter, which is in its first week of release in theaters, made just under $20.2 million in domestic markets this weekend, not too far from the sum the Hunger Games made. Napoleon’s contribution was marginally lower, and the film created by Apple still needs to earn back its $200 million investment.)
The most striking aspect of all these figures, however, is how minuscule they are overall: Even though Thanksgiving was not as disastrous for cinemas as it was the previous year, it is still one of the holidays that hasn’t recovered very well from the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Source: AVCLUBE
