Box office: Dark Disney, Napoleon misses the coronation, Hunger Games still in the lead

Disney lost Thanksgiving. Accustomed to finishing at the top of the box office during this famous long holiday weekend in the United States, the studio finished far from expectations with its new animated film wish. Hunger Games keeps its first place, while Napoleon missing the coronation. We take stock.

Disney hungover

wish was supposed to be the film of the great and beautiful celebration of a century of existence for The Walt Disney Company… but it is rather the hangover which predominates in this Thanksgiving release. With only 31.7 million dollars collected during its first five days of operation, the film is far from analysts’ projections, who expected it to be around 45-50 million.

An even more disappointing score when we know that Thanksgiving had become for several years the studio’s favorite weekend for its major so-called “princess” animated films. To compare, Rapunzel (68.7 million), Snow Queen (93.5 million), Moana (82 million) or even Frozen 2 (125 million) had all conquered the box office.

Internationally, wish only collects 17.3 million, for a world total of 49 million. A very meager result for a film with a substantial budget of 200 million dollars. After the failures of Ant-Man 3, The Marvels, Indiana Jones 5 And The Haunted MansionDisney’s dark year (at least in cinema) continues.

Second in the ranking with $32.5 million in five days, Napoleon missed his coronation. Ridley Scott’s film reached 78.8 million worldwide, a figure which is necessarily a little disappointing given the enormous budget of the feature film, estimated at $200 million.

But the film, just like Killers of the Flower Moon by Martin Scorsese in October, is produced by Apple which is for the moment less interested in profitability in theaters than in the prestige of its productions, and their upcoming arrivals on its Apple TV+ streaming platform. The Cupertino company will also continue this quest for legitimacy in the field of entertainment in January with Argylenew film by Matthew Vaughn (Kingsman).

Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Serpent and the Songbird takes advantage of these two damp squibs to maintain its number one position in the ranking with 42 million dollars collected in five days. A figure down by only 35% compared to last week. The film thus totaled 98.3 million in the United States and almost 200 million worldwide.

Helped by Thanksgiving, this result is solid for a film that only cost $100 million. What to promise to this Hunger Games a nice career, while no real competition is planned before December 15 and Wonka.

Finally, you will not see it in the ranking below: The Marvels finished sixth with only 9.2 million gleaned for its third weekend of operation. The latest Marvel production totals 76 million in North America for a worldwide cumulative total of 187 million. At this rate, the film will become the first MCU film not to exceed the symbolic mark of 100 million in the United States. Disaster.

US box office from November 22 to 26, 2023 (estimates)