Brief Thanksgiving Box Office Update: Moana Drowning Newcomers While Fantastic Beasts Is Showing Strong Stamina

I'm still recuperating from all the food I ate yesterday, not to mention trying to study for a major Math exam on Monday, but what the hey, how about a real brief look at what's been going on at the box office these past two days which have delivered four new wide releases that are all doing varying degrees of box office. I'll just be talking about those four new wide releases and Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them in this super brief (by my standards!) box office column!

For Moana, it's been smooth sailing at the box office after debuting to $15.7 million on Wednesday, a bigger opening day figure than Frozen, and then grabbing another $9.9 million yesterday. With $25.6 million rounded up in just two days, it's looking at an opening weekend in the low-60 millions and an opening five-day gross in the high-80 million range. These numbers are quite similar, albeit slightly smaller, than the ones posted by Frozen over the Thanksgiving holiday frame.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them has actually been holding quite well over the week, grossing $11.1 million on Wednesday and decreasing just 12% on Thursday to gross another $9.6 million, a smaller Wednesday-to-Thursday decrease than the one that the final Hunger Games movie had during this exact same holiday frame last year. Newt Scamander should have a second weekend in the mid-40 million range, taking him well past $150 million in just 10 days.

It looks like Allied is struggling more than most Brad Pitt films, with the World War II drama grossing only $2.7 million on its opening day and then going down 14% on Thursday to add $2.3 million to its domestic cume. It looks like the feature will barely crack $10 million over its opening weekend, an insanely poor bow for an $85 million budgeted drama/thriller. We'll see if this one can rebound in the days ahead, but it doesn't look so good right now.

If small-scale movie studio was looking for Bad Santa 2 to reverse their cold streak at the box office, well, they're getting coal in their stocking I'm afraid, as Bad Santa 2 is looking to become the newest 2016 sequel to bomb badly. Bad Santa grossed only $1.58 million on its opening day and then went down 16% yesterday to gross another $1.3 million. This one's not even going to gross over $10 million over the five-day holiday frame, a disastrous result.

Speaking of disasters, Rules Don't Apply, the newest Warren Beatty directorial effort, became one of the year's biggest wide release duds, grossing only $308,000 on opening day and going down 9% on Thanksgiving Day to add $279,000 to its gross. Despite playing in over 2,300 theaters and having some relatively big names in its cast (like, y'know, Warren Beatty), this movies not gonna gross over $1.5 million over its three-day opening weekend. Yikes.

I'll be back Sunday to discuss in greater detail the opening weekend sums of these movies, as well as analyze why they soared or failed at the box office, as well as look at the box office grosses of holdovers like Doctor Strange, Trolls and Arrival and arthouse fare like Nocturnal Animals, Loving and Lion.