It’s doubtful even the most bullish Disney executive saw the success of Zootopia 2 coming.
The studio’s animated sequel grossed an eye-popping $556 million worldwide this weekend, with an outrageous $272 million coming from China alone. That puts Zootopia 2 behind only Avengers: Endgame on the list of highest-grossing openings in the country.
“I’m very curious to hear what Disney internally was thinking going into this weekend,” Sean McNulty says. “Because there was no word that this was going to happen… this is baffling — unexpected in a good way.”
“In the last six years, everything we’ve released in Hollywood, China’s just said, ‘No, not really,’ until finally Zootopia 2 came along,” adds Richard Rushfield. “And then they’re like, ‘Yes, now that’s what we’ve been waiting for.’”
While the global grosses for Zootopia 2 were significant, its success in North America had a (very) slightly lower ceiling: the movie earned $156 million over five days, the second-best Thanksgiving opening stretch ever behind only Moana 2 last year. Overall, Thanksgiving weekend’s total box office finished fourth all-time, behind last year’s record-setting haul, 2018 and 2014.
Part of the reason the total North American box office lagged this year compared to last is Wicked: For Good. The sequel finished roughly $25 million behind last year’s Wicked for the five days. (Wicked: For Good, however, is still slightly ahead of the first film’s box office total to this point because it had a larger opening.)
“You’re a captive of the story you have, and the story of Wicked, if you’ve seen The Wizard of Oz — which is only the most famous movie in history — ends with the death of the Wicked Witch,” Richard says of why the word-of-mouth hasn’t been as strong. “So you’ve got to do a movie that’s building up to that point. The Wizard of Oz doesn’t end with the Wicked Witch of the West becoming the new wizard. This was the dark half of the movie.”
“The universe building in the ’30s, Richard, just was crap,” adds Sean.
Elsewhere on the charts: A24 tries to counterprogram with Eternity, Searchlight Pictures’ Rental Family shows some life and Focus Features’ Hamnet is the rare awards contender this year to find success with a platform release.
