Zootopia 2's arrival on November 26, 2025 marks the latest in a long line of films in the Walt Disney Animation Studios canon to open in wide release over Thanksgiving weekend. While the original Zootopia debuted in March 2016, this furry sequel is dropping in a timeframe that the Mouse House's animated offerings have ruled for eons. The eight biggest Thanksgiving opening weekends in history belong to animated Disney fare, while even live-action Mouse House films like 1996's 101 Dalmations or 2007's Enchanted have often debuted over this timeframe hoping to get in on this box office action.
But why do Walt Disney Animation Studios movies open over Thanksgiving? When did this holiday become the de facto launchpad for Disney's homegrown animated projects (plus a handful of Pixar movies)?
One thing to remember is that, before the 1970s, the way films were released was drastically different. As Tom Brueggemann helpfully notes in his March 2022 IndieWire piece "‘The Godfather’ Helped Invent the Blockbuster, Even Before ‘Jaws’ and ‘Star Wars’"...
"The standard M.O. for an anticipated hit was to open in one or two theaters each in New York and Los Angeles, on the same day or close together (usually Wednesday), and add more in the weeks to come. It might take a month or more for the top 200 markets to get a title, and even longer to reach outlying theaters."
The Godfather and especially Jaws forever changed theatrical release patterns by immediately launching into hundreds of theaters across the country.
For the purposes of this piece, it's important to remember this when considering when and where Disney released its earliest animated movies. These titles were expected to make bank long-term, not just over six or eight weeks. Thus, some (by modern standards) odd release dates were chosen for the very first Walt Disney Animation Studios titles. Pinocchio dropped in early February 1940, while Dumbo launched in late October 1941. Interestingly, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs debuted four days before Christmas 1937. Here was the first example in history of Disney Animation and the holidays being bedfellows.
Only one of the pre-1970 Disney Animation Studios titles (Fantasia) dropped in November, a month that this outfit would later dominate.. Summertime and February were instead the go-to launchpads for the studio in the 1950s. The Jungle Book began rolling out to the public in December 1967, where it quickly garnered record-shattering grosses for an animated Disney film. This may have been one of the earliest signs of how well Disney Animation Studios titles could do in the final weeks of the year.
In the pre-VHS days, Disney also constantly re-released its animated movies into theaters, usually every seven or eight years. Could this have been where the Mouse House got the idea for Thanksgiving as a lucrative launchpad for animated movie releases? Concrete data on exact release dates for all of these reissues is sometimes hard to track down in the modern world. However, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs doesn't appear to have had a big pre-1987 Thanksgiving reissue (it was largely re-released in February or November). Fantasia's various reissues weren't centered on Thanksgiving either, ditto Dumbo.
Even after The Godfather and Jaws changed how movies were released theatrically, Disney kept releasing titles like The Rescuers and The Fox and the Hound in June or July. It wasn't until Oliver & Company opened over the pre-Thanksgiving weekend in 1988 that a new release date norm was established for Disney Animation Studios releases. Six years earlier, animated feature The Last Unicorn opened in the pre-Thanksgiving slot and got run over financially by E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial (then six months into its run). It was 1986's An American Tail, though, that really proved the Thanksgiving timeframe could be lucrative for animated family fare.
This Don Bluth directorial effort (produced by Steven Spielberg) racked up big numbers in a domestic run that not only thrived over Thanksgiving but also end of December holidays one month later. If a family movie took off at Thanksgiving, it could make money over multiple lucrative holidays. Disney re-released Cinderella over Thanksgiving 1987, while also launching Touchstone Pictures comedy Three Men and a Baby over the same holiday frame. Not only did Cinderella gross $34 million over this domestic relaunch, but Three Men and a Baby became the biggest movie of 1987 in North America.
An American Tail was no fluke. Animated cinema could really thrive over Thanksgiving weekend. Three Men and a Baby, meanwhile, showed how high the lifetime grosses could be for Turkey Day blockbusters. Oliver & Company launched over Thanksgiving 1988, while The Little Mermaid flourished over the same holiday in 1989. The next three Disney Animation Studios releases would debut over Thanksgiving to increasingly massive numbers. 1994's The Lion King would start a new trend of annual Disney Animation Studios titles debuting in June, however, 1995's Toy Story kept the tradition of animated Disney Thanksgiving releases alive and well. A Bug's Life and Toy Story 2 would open over this frame to massive numbers before the end of the 20th century.
In 2008, Bolt marked only the second Disney Animation Studios release (following Treasure Planet) to open either over or directly before the Thanksgiving frame. Two years later, Tangled expanded into wide release on Wednesday, November 24, the day before Thanksgiving. Fittingly, the first fully-animated Disney fairy tale musical to open over Thanksgiving since 1992's Aladdin was also the feature to resurrect Disney Animation Studios as a box office powerhouse. Frozen, Moana, and Pixar release Coco further solidified Disney's dominance over the Thanksgiving frame.
What's extra fascinating about Disney's continued success in this realm is how Thanksgiving weekend is often not ideal for movies to launch in. If a movie don't immediately take off over this holiday frame, it quickly gets pushed out of theaters by the deluge of new December movies. It's feast or famine in this holiday zone. To wit, only five non-Disney features (Creed II, Four Christmases, Creed, Back to the Future: Part II, and Knives Out) have had $26+ million three-day weekend debuts over Thanksgiving. Disney, meanwhile, can attest to how dangerous this release spot can be. The Good Dinosaur, Wish, and Strange World all bombed over this holiday weekend and then quickly vanished from theaters.
So entrenched is the studio's output in this timeframe that it's hard to believe that this release date tradition is less than 40 years old. One would think that Thanksgiving and new animated Disney family movies have been hand-in-hand since Floyd Norman first walked into the Disney studio. However, this release date strategy is still comparatively new in the 100+ year history of the Mouse House. It's also a standard inspired by an immigrant mouse and Tom Selleck (so many things in show business are). With Disney already scheduling Hexed and Frozen 3 for the next two Thanksgiving weekends, the Mouse House won't be abandoning this weekend anytime soon.
That's despite this being the place where poor Treasure Planet perished so dramatically at the box office. Poor Jim Hawkins and Morph, y'all deserved better.
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