Warner Bros and J.K. Rowling’s original cinematic story Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them ruled Tuesday with an estimated $9.3 million at 4,144 theaters as four new wide releases began previews in an effort to get a leg up on the Wednesday-Sunday Thanksgiving Day stretch. The cume through five days for the David Yates-directed movie stands at $90.5M. Beasts’ Tuesday beats a trio of November Harry Potter releases including 2001’s Sorcerer’s Stone ($7.65M), Chamber Of Secrets ($4.7M) and Goblet Of Fire ($9M). Currently, Beasts is pacing 13% behind the first five days of Sorcerer’s Stone, which grossed $104.6M during that span and finished with a domestic cume of $317.6M.
But Beasts didn’t stop Walt Disney from beating preview records with its holiday release of Moana, which drew $2.6M last night from shows starting at 7 PM. Moana‘s moola outstrips previous feature toon preview nights including Zootopia‘s Thursday night ($1.7M), Big Hero Six ($1.4M), The Good Dinosaur (which had a Tuesday night preview record of $1.3M) as well as Frozen ($1.2M). The latter ice sister princess movie remains the five-day Thanksgiving champ with $93.59M (with a $67.4M 3-day). This year, Disney hit opening records with Pixar’s Finding Dory notching a $135M domestic debut, the best ever for an animated movie, as well as Zootopia clocking $75.1M in its first weekend, which is a record for an original Disney Animation title.
Moana will bow in 3,80o theaters today with 80% of its locations providing 3D. The film, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, features songs by multi-Tony-winning Hamilton star and creator Lin-Manual Miranda, and tells the story about a Pacific Island girl who in an effort to reverse the bad luck that has fallen on her Oceania village seeks out the demigod Maui (Dwayne Johnson) so that they might right the wrongs that he has done by angering the gods.
Tracking is split; some are giving the edge to Moana to take the 3- and 5-day No. 1 run (never underestimate Disney) with as much as $75M-$80M, but there’s also a scenario where over five days Rowling’s monsters could tip over Disney’s surfer girl. Moana currently has a 99% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score.
An interesting side note about yesterday’s box office: DreamWorks Animation/Fox’s Trolls made a little bit more than Moana with $2.7M at 3,945. It just goes to show the staying power of that movie in its 19th day of release with a running cume of $120.9M, which is $19M behind DWA’s November 2008 hit Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa at the same point in time (it finaled at $180M stateside), with the hairy short guys set to overtake the final domestic cume of 2007’s Bee Movie ($126.6M) this week.
Paramount’s Brad Pitt-Marion Cotillard World War II movie Allied marched to $600K, an amount that’s just above the preview night for DreamWorks/Disney’s Cold War period movie last year Bridge Of Spies which made $500K on its Thursday before making a $5.4M Friday and a $15.4M 3-day. Without a major holiday in its initial path, Bridge Of Spies made $18.6M in its first five days, and the hope for the Melrose lot is that they get to $20M for this $85M pic directed by Robert Zemeckis. It centers on an intelligence officer (Pitt) who–whoops–falls in love with the wrong girl (Cotillard) in North Africa during the war. Allied currently has a 62% fresh Rotten Tomatoes score.
Broad Green/Miramax’s Bad Santa 2 found $350K at 1,969 venues last night. It’s an R-rated comedy. The first Bad Santa opened to $1.6M on Thanksgiving eve, then went on to gross $16.8M over five days. A promotional screening of Bad Santa 2 out here in L.A. was overcrowded and played through the roof. Bad Santa 2‘s previews are lower than that of Seth Rogen’s $550K for The Night Before a year ago; however, that movie was playing at more theaters (2,410).
Also previewing last night was 20th Century Fox/Regency’s Rules Don’t Apply which hasn’t really caught on yet with the holiday crowd, making $65K at 1,100. The Warren Beatty period comedy which runs 126 minutes isn’t expected to do that well over five days with a take that’s in the mid-to-high single digits. Pic carries a production cost of $25M. Currently, reviewers are split on it with a 58% Rotten Tomatoes score.
There are 74% of K-12 schools out on recess, with another 56% colleges. Those numbers rise to 100% over the next two days, with Black Friday typically the most lucrative moviegoing day over the five-day holiday.
