Despite the sluggishness of the fall box office with the bombing of Joker: Folie à Deux and the flat-footed start of Venom: The Last Dance, the holiday frames are coming up roses. Specifically Disney’s Moana 2 could help fuel the year along with Wicked and Mufasa: The Lion King to nearly $9 billion. This is all per AMC CEO Adam Aron on this afternoon’s Q3 earnings call.
“Some people in the know are telling me that Moana 2 could eclipse and outshine even the success of Inside Out 2,” he beamed. By the way, Inside Out 2 is the highest-grossing movie YTD stateside with $652.9M. The Pixar sequel opened to $154.2M, the second-highest opening of the year behind Disney’s own Deadpool & Wolverine from Marvel Studios ($211.4M).
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Recent six-week-in-advance projections from tracking service Quorum put Moana 2 at $100 million-plus during the five-day Thanksgiving Wednesday-Sunday frame and $75M-$82M over Friday-Sunday. The first Moana in 2016 opened to $82M over five days, ultimately grossing $248.7M stateside.
Disney owns the five-day Thanksgiving stretch record for a No. 1 movie with 2019’s Frozen 2, which did $125M. Tomorrow we’ll have the opening forecast for Moana 2 from tracking firm NRG. Already, Universal’s Wicked is looking at an $80M opening in the weekend prior to Thanksgiving followed by Paramount rival, Gladiator II, with $65M.
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AMC’s Q3 figures bested Wall Street expectations, with the circuit swinging to an adjusted loss per share of 4 cents from a profit of 8 cents in the year-earlier period. Total revenue of $1.35 billion was down from $1.4B a year ago despite July-to-September hits including Deadpool & Wolverine and Beetlejuice Beetlejuice.