Box office

Moana bests Beasts for No. 1 slot

Dwayne Johnson stars as the demigod Maui and Auli’i Cravalho plays Moana, a girl on a mission to save her people, in Disney’s new computer-animated film Moana. It came in first at last weekend’s box office and made about $82 million.
Dwayne Johnson stars as the demigod Maui and Auli’i Cravalho plays Moana, a girl on a mission to save her people, in Disney’s new computer-animated film Moana. It came in first at last weekend’s box office and made about $82 million.

LOS ANGELES -- Disney's Moana sailed to No. 1 at the box office over the long holiday weekend, with estimated ticket sales of $82 million -- more than enough to bump last week's chart-topper, Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, to second place.

Even more encouraging for Disney, though, might be that Moana, an animated musical about a Polynesian princess on a mission to save her island, now holds the record for the second-biggest five-day Thanksgiving opening.

Its haul from Wednesday to Sunday beat that of Pixar's Toy Story 2, which raked in $80.1 million in 1999. Early box-office returns for Moana came close to matching figures for 2013's Frozen, which leads the five-day Thanksgiving list. But in the end, Disney's summery adventure fell short of the wintry crown holder's unsurpassed $93.5 million opening.

In fact, with the addition of Moana (and Disney's 2006 acquisition of Pixar), nine of the 10 movies with the biggest Thanksgiving openings are Disney titles, according to Box Office Mojo, including Tangled, The Good Dinosaur and Enchanted.

Moana, with Dwayne Johnson as a tattooed demigod who accompanies a princess (voiced by 16-year-old Auli'i Cravalho) on her journey, was helped to No. 1 by rave reviews and an A grade from the audience-polling firm CinemaScore.

Another family-oriented picture, Warner Bros.' Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, took in an estimated $65.7 million from Wednesday to Sunday.

The spinoff from the blockbuster Harry Potter franchise -- it's the first of five planned Fantastic Beasts titles -- opened Nov. 18 and has taken in $156 million. Starring Eddie Redmayne, the movie also notched an A grade from CinemaScore, though its reviews weren't as strong as Moana's. Rotten Tomatoes, the review-aggregation site, gave it a 77 percent score on its "freshness" scale, compared with Moana's 98 percent.

The more grown-up Allied -- Paramount's World War II drama directed by Robert Zemeckis and starring Brad Pitt -- brought in $17.7 million over the five-day weekend to debut at No. 4, behind Marvel's returning Doctor Strange, which made $18.9 million.

Two other new movies failed to meet expectations.

Broad Green Pictures' Bad Santa 2, with Billy Bob Thornton in the title role, opened to $9 million -- considerably less than the $16 million analysts had predicted, and shy of the $16.8 million the first Bad Santa opened with in 2003.

And Warren Beatty's Rules Don't Apply, hampered by mixed reviews, disappointed with $2 million over five days in theaters. Writing in the Times, movie critic Kenneth Turan said the 20th Century Fox film about Howard Hughes -- Beatty's first directorial outing since Bulworth in 1998 -- was "not without its charms, but there aren't enough of them and they don't readily cohere."

The Associated Press

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross (some films debuted Nov. 23) and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by comScore:

  1. Moana, Disney, $56,631,401, 3,875 locations, $14,615 average, $82,080,274, one week.

  2. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, Warner Bros., $45,084,763, 4,144 locations, $10,880 average, $156,012,316, two weeks.

  3. Doctor Strange, Disney, $13,737,945, 3,008 locations, $4,567 average, $205,778,872, four weeks.

  4. Allied, Paramount, $12,701,743, 3,160 locations, $4,020 average, $17,726,047, one week.

  5. Arrival, Paramount, $11,454,422, 2,442 locations, $4,691 average, $62,561,985, three weeks.

  6. Trolls, 20th Century Fox, $10,642,141, 3,322 locations, $3,204 average, $135,400,583, four weeks.

  7. Bad Santa 2, Broad Green Pictures, $6,176,680, 2,920 locations, $2,115 average, $9,101,213, one week.

  8. Almost Christmas, Universal, $5,694,620, 1,769 locations, $3,219 average, $34,693,880, three weeks.

  9. Hacksaw Ridge, Lionsgate, $5,519,615, 2,332 locations, $2,367 average, $52,234,465, four weeks.

  10. The Edge of Seventeen, STX Entertainment, $2,965,421, 1,945 locations, $1,525 average, $10,272,453, two weeks.

  11. Loving, Focus Features, $1,695,328, 421 locations, $4,027 average, $4,072,055, four weeks.

  12. Rules Don't Apply, 20th Century Fox, $1,589,625, 2,382 locations, $667 average, $2,176,694, one week.

  13. Manchester by the Sea, Roadside Attractions, $1,225,990, 48 locations, $25,541 average, $1,627,629, two weeks.

  14. Moonlight, A24, $1,219,214, 618 locations, $1,973 average, $8,544,109, six weeks.

  15. The Accountant, Warner Bros., $1,042,519, 556 locations, $1,875 average, $83,208,893, seven weeks.

  16. Dear Zindagi, Reliance Big Entertainment PVT. Ltd., $977,928, 154 locations, $6,350 average, $1,397,133, one week.

  17. Bleed for This, Open Road, $920,559, 1,549 locations, $594 average, $4,224,263, two weeks.

  18. Nocturnal Animals, Focus Features, $836,238, 127 locations, $6,585 average, $1,689,808, two weeks.

  19. Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, Paramount, $361,555, 345 locations, $1,048 average, $57,418,255, six weeks.

  20. Tyler Perry's Boo! A Madea Halloween, Lionsgate, $325,676, 339 locations, $961 average, $72,820,708, six weeks.

MovieStyle on 12/02/2016

Upcoming Events