Weekend Estimates: Coco Gives Disney Another Thanksgiving Win

November 26, 2017

Coco Coco will easily top the box office chart this Thanksgiving weekend, with Disney projecting a $71 million 5-day opening, including $49 million from Friday to Sunday. That’s the fourth-best Thanksgiving opening of all time, behind Frozen ($94 million), Moana ($82 million), and Toy Story 2 ($80 million). In all, Disney lays claim to 10 of the top 11 opening weekend’s over this holiday period, although, to be fair, the Hunger Games and Harry Potter franchises both claim several spots in the higher reaches of the Thanksgiving weekend record chart, but were just playing in their second weekend, rather than opening.

Nit-picking aside, it’s a great weekend for Coco.

With an A+ CinemaScore, and 96% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the film should have great legs. Its audience this weekend skewed heavily towards families (who made up 73% of Coco’s ticket buyers), and young: 36% of tickets were purchased for kids 12 and younger. That will all help it run through Christmas, although its slightly slower start compared to some other Disney animated films means it is headed for something close to Tangled’s $200 million than Frozen’s $400 million at this stage. Keep an eye on how it performs over the next few days though.

Other openers are having widely divergent weekends. The Man Who Invented Christmas is doing subdued business, with around $1.34 million for Bleecker Street. Roman J. Israel, Esq.’s slightly strange release strategy hasn’t paid off, with $4.5 million from 1,669 theaters this weekend, for a total of $6.3 million so far. The standout performer is Call Me By Your Name, which is projected to earn $404,000 from just four theaters, and become the first film released in 2017 to top $100,000 per theater.

A couple of other honorable mentions go to Darkest Hour, with $176,000 from four theaters over three days, and $248,000 over five days; and Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, with $18,742 projected from a single theater, after opening on Friday.

With studios shut down for parts of last week, there’ll be more to come, including numbers for a few other limited release openers, come Monday.

- Weekend estimates
- Biggest 3-day Thanksgiving openings
- Pixar box office history
- DC Extended Universe franchise history
- Marvel Cinematic Universe franchise history

- Coco Comparisons
- Justice League Comparisons
- Wonder Comparisons
- Thor: Ragnarok Comparisons
- Daddy’s Home 2 Comparisons
- Murder on the Orient Express Comparisons
- The Star Comparisons
- A Bad Moms Christmas Comparisons

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Coco, Darkest Hour, The Man Who Invented Christmas, Call Me by Your Name, Roman J. Israel, Esq., Bombshell: The Hedy Lamarr Story, Harry Potter, Hunger Games, Marvel Cinematic Universe, DC Extended Universe