Disney has created its own Thanksgiving holiday tradition by releasing a family-friendly animated film every year around these dates. This year’s Encanto continues with that trend and has done fairly well in the box office considering its target audience was hesitant to return to theaters until recently. Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci came in third this weekend, also with notably good results given its older demographic wasn’t eager to visit cinemas either.
The family musical Encanto reached a solid box office result of $40.3 million over the weekend. Even though this may be far from previous years Disney film Thanksgiving release weekends such as Frozen II (2019) with $123.7 million or Ralph Breaks The Internet (2018) with $84.6 million, it does show a new and encouraging trend for Disney producers that parents are once again willing to bring their children to the movie theaters. Encanto has been the best opening weekend for an animated film of 2021. Notably, a very important result given that animated flicks before the pandemic were among the highest-grossing films of the year for Disney.
Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, and Jared Leto are the all-star cast that brings to life the Italian murder fiasco of the Gucci family in the 1980s. A highly entertaining movie with mostly positive feedback from critics and fans, 61% on Rotten Tomatoes, and a B+ on CinemaScore, House of Gucci landed third this weekend in the box office with $14.2 million.
Films which target-audience enjoy more mature content have been struggling this year to get their viewers back in the movie theater seats as much as family-friendly movies have. Thus, a $14.2 million outcome for an opening weekend is not considered a failure in the year 2021. In comparison, films such as King Richard only made $11.3 on its opening weekend, not to mention The Last Duel box office debacle of $4.7 million. Only No Time To Die ($155 million) and Dune ($100 million) have made it over the $100 million domestic benchmark this year.
Ghostbusters: Afterlife manages to stay strong in movie theaters with $24.5 million, which places it second this weekend. In fourth place with $8.9 million is Eternals and fifth place is given to Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City with $7.8 million.
The coming-of-age indie drama by Paul Thomas Anderson Licorice Pizza opened in four cinemas in New York and Los Angeles this weekend generating a total of $335,000. MGM and United Artists plan to release the film nationwide on Christmas Day.
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