• Join Puck

    Directly Supporting Authors

    A new economic model in which writers are also partners in the business.

    Personalized Subscriptions

    Customize your settings to receive the newsletters you want from the authors you follow.

    Stay in the Know

    Connect directly with Puck talent through email and exclusive events.

  • What is puck? Newsletters Authors Podcasts Events Gift Puck Careers

The Post-Thanksgiving Cop-Out

The long green tail of ‘Wicked’/‘Moana 2’ helped break more box office records this weekend, proving that the public was still primed and ready to fill seats the week after Thanksgiving. Too bad the studios lack the courage to give them something big to see.

wicked movie
Given that audiences spent $100 million on Moana 2, Wicked, and Gladiator II on a non-opening, post-holiday weekend, it certainly seems like a missed opportunity to have programmed a more ambitious film to take advantage of the lingering theatrical appetite. Photo: Courtesy of Universal Pictures
Scott Mendelson
December 10, 2024

First, the good news. This past weekend set a record for what’s usually a barren post-Thanksgiving frame, with a $133 million box office haul in North America, mostly due to the enduring muscle of Moana 2 ($51.3 million in weekend two) and Wicked: Part One ($36.5 million in weekend three). The two musical fantasies netted the largest and second-largest Friday-Sunday grosses ever for this post-holiday weekend and accounted for two-thirds of the overall domestic haul. Concurrently, a dozen new films of all shapes (A24’s Y2K) and sizes (Sony and Crunchyroll’s Solo Leveling: ReAwakening) combined to earn another $19 million, with $4.8 million coming from Tollywood’s Pushpa 2: The Rule and $4.6 million courtesy of a 10th anniversary Imax-exclusive rerelease of Chris Nolan’s Interstellar.