Though the holidays are known for bringing in audiences for an enticing night of cinema, COVID-19 has taken a substantial hit on theatre ticket sales. However, there are certain movies that surpass the pitfalls of the pandemic. On November 24th, Disney's newest, magical musical Encanto opened with $7.5 million at the box office. Though the Columbian-inspired family flick dipped in performance on Thanksgiving, only raking in $5.8 million, experts are expecting this to be one of Disney's biggest successes in years.
Directed by Jared Bush, Charise Castro Smith, and Bryon Howard, Encanto tells the tale of a mystic land in Columbia, when every child is gifted magical powers except for the film's protagonist Mirabel. Families followed the adventures of Mirabel in 3,980 theatres across the country.
As Disney's sixth animated film, it was quite expected for Encanto to perform well in theatres despite the box office curse of the pandemic. It met analysts' expectations when it was released on November 24th to rave reviews from critics. It made $7.5 million on its opening night domestically. The following day brought $5.8 million in ticket sales. This puts the totality of Encanto's gross within the film's first two days of the holiday weekend at $13.3 million.
While these numbers are substantially less than usual Thanksgiving releases, Encanto leads the pack as the highest-grossing film of this year's holiday weekend. Following the Disney musical is Sony Pictures' Ghostbusters: Afterlife. The fourth edition of the hit Ghostbusters franchise brought around $10 million from its first two days on the big screen.
In previous years, the Thanksgiving weekend has been a huge boost in ticket sales. Hit movies typically brought in a gross of $250 million into the movie industry. Though last year, the only film to reach that holiday benchmark was The Croods: A New Age. Films that would have presumably fared better in theatres pre-pandemic like Freaky and The War With Grandpa struggled to even surpass an opening weekend gross of $100 million.
"This is certainly quite a turnaround from a year ago when very little was coming out and very few people were going to theaters," chief analyst for Box Office Pro Steven Robbins tells Yahoo! Finance, "but we're also not quite back to the level of two years ago."
Sources: Deadline CNBC, Box Office Mojo, Yahoo! Finance