Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
‘Moana 2’ sails to a record $221 million opening as Hollywood celebrates a moviegoing feast
NEW YORK | Christmas came early at the box office this year.
“Moana 2” brought in a tidal wave of moviegoers over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, setting records with $221 million in ticket sales, according to studio estimates Sunday. That, combined with “Wicked” and “Gladiator II,” made for an unprecedented weekend in cinemas and a confluence of blockbusters more like what’s often found in late December.
Expectations were high for Walt Disney Co.’s “Moana 2,” but the film — originally planned as a series for Disney+ before it was redirected to the big screen — blew predictions out of the water. Its five-day opening set a new record for Thanksgiving moviegoing. (The previous best was $125 million for “Frozen 2” in its second week of release in 2019.) “Moana 2” added $165.3 million internationally; with $386 million worldwide, it’s the second-best global launch of the year.
At the same time, the sensation of “Wicked” showed no signs of slowing down. The Universal Pictures musical brought in $117.5 million over the five-day weekend, pushing its two-week global total to $359.2 million. Not accounting for inflation, “Wicked” is now the highest grossing Broadway adaptation over “Grease.” (That 1978 film grossed $190 million, but factoring in inflation would put it past $900 million.)
“Gladiator II,” meanwhile, also held well, dipping 44% from its opening weekend. Ridley Scott’s sequel to his Oscar-winning best picture original collected $44 million in its second weekend. While its steep price tag of $250 million will make profitability challenging, “Gladiator II” has swiftly gathered $320 million worldwide.
Those three films drove the overall box office to a record $420 million in overall Thanksgiving weekend ticket sales, according to Comscore — more than $100 million more than ever before. For an industry that has been battered in recent years by the pandemic, work stoppages and the upheaval caused by streaming, it was a triumphant weekend that showed the still-potent power of Hollywood’s blockbuster machine. Before “Wicked,” “Moana 2” and “Gladiator II” arrived in theaters, ticket sales were running about 25% behind pre-pandemic levels.
Michael O’Leary, president and chief executive of the National Association of Theatre Owners, said the weekend showed what’s possible when “all the pieces of the puzzle come together” in compelling big-budget movies with marketing muscle.
“We’re very optimistic that this weekend is the start of what we believe is a full-on charge into the future,” he said. “The remaining quarter of this year looks very promising and then on into 2025 and 2026. We’re hoping next year is the first kind of normal year this industry has had in a long time.”
Like the last time such anticipated movies collided on the release calendar — 2023’s much-ballyhooed “Barbenheimer” — the movie industry again could see evidence of a rising moviegoing tide lifting all blockbusters. In recent years, studios have typically tried to space out most of their biggest releases. Earlier this fall, “Venom: The Last Dance,” for example, was the No. 1 film for three straight weeks, despite not being particularly successful.
“For a long, long time in Hollywood, there’s been a belief that you don’t put big blockbuster movies up against each other,” said O’Leary. “But the truth of the matter is that competition is good. It’s good for the movies. It’s good for the studios. It’s good for the theater owners. But it’s particularly good for the moviegoing public.”
“Moana 2” was the nexus of a strategy shift for Disney. When it first began development, it was fashioned as a series for streaming. But when Bob Iger returned as chief executive, he reconsidered the balance between theatrical and streaming. The original “Moana,” after all, was the most streamed movie on Disney+ in 2023, with the added benefit of $680 million in box office in 2016. Only in February this year did Iger announce the release of “Moana 2,” with Auli’i Cravalho and Dwayne Johnson returning as the voices of Moana and Maui.
“It just shows you that the big screen and small screen are not adversarial. They can be complementary and additive,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. “Whoever made that decision to go big screen globally with ‘Moana 2,’ that was one of the greatest decisions ever.”
And it helped lead a resurgence for Walt Disney Co., whose last two animated November releases — “Strange World” and “Wish” — fizzled in theaters. “Moana 2” may become the third $1 billion-grossing movie for the studio in 2024, along with “Inside Out 2” and “Deadpool & Wolverine.” Though reviews for “Moana 2” have only been 65% “fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it an “A-” CinemaScore.
“Moana 2” is also part of a major rebound for family moviegoing. According to David A. Gross, a film consultant who publishes a newsletter for Franchise Entertainment, family moviegoing in 2024 is going to account for approximately $6.8 billion in ticket sales, roughly the sums of 2022 and 2023, combined.
After such large debuts, “Moana 2” and “Wicked” are likely to continue to drive moviegoing through December. The only question will be if this year’s Christmas movies — historically a much bigger holiday period for theaters — can come anywhere near the Thanksgiving lineup. Among the movies aiming for that holiday corridor are Disney’s “Mufasa: The Lion King,” Paramount’s “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” and Searchlight’s “A Complete Unknown,” with Timothée Chalamet as a young Bob Dylan.
Final domestic figures will be released Monday. Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Comscore:
1. “Moana 2,” $135 million.
2. “Wicked,” $80 million.
3. “Gladiator II” $30.7 million.
4. “Red One,” $12.9 million.
5. “The Best Christmas Pageant Ever,” $3.3 million.
6. “Bonhoeffer: Pastor. Spy. Assassin,” $2.4 million.
7. “Venom: The Last Dance,” $2.2 million.
8. “Heretic,” $956,797.
9. “The Wild Robot,” $670,000.
10. “A Real Pain,” $665,000.
Former My Chemical Romance drummer Bob Bryar dies at age 44
Bob Bryar, a former drummer with My Chemical Romance who played on the band’s career-defining rock opera, “The Black Parade,” has died, according to the band. He was 44.
“The band asks for your patience and understanding as they process the news of Bob’s passing,” a spokesperson for My Chemcial Romance said in a statement Sunday
The statement did not include any additional details.
Bryar replaced drummer Matt Pelissier in 2004 and left the band in 2010. Bryar moved on from the music business and later auctioned off a drum kit to raise money for an animal adoption center in Williamson County, Tennessee.
Next year, the band will embark on a 10-date North American stadium tour, where they will perform “The Black Parade,” released in 2006, in full.
My Chemical Romance formed in 2001 and released four studio albums across their career, first breaking through with 2004’s “Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge.” They announced their breakup in 2013; a year later, they released a greatest hits collection titled “May Death Never Stop You.” In 2019, they announced a reunion, later revealing they’d privately reunited two years earlier.
Marshall Brickman, who co-wrote ‘Annie Hall’ with Woody Allen, dies at 85
NEW YORK | The Oscar-winning screenwriter Marshall Brickman, whose wide-ranging career spanned some of Woody Allen’s best films, the Broadway musical “Jersey Boys” and a number of Johnny Carson’s most beloved sketches, has died. He was 85.
Brickman died Friday in Manhattan, his daughter Sophie Brickman told The New York Times. No cause of death was cited.
Brickman was best known for his extensive collaboration with Allen, beginning with the 1973 film “Sleeper.” Together, they co-wrote “Annie Hall” (1977), “Manhattan” (1979) and “Manhattan Murder Mystery” (1993). The loosely structured script for “Annie Hall,” in particular, has been hailed as one of the wittiest comedies. It won Brickman and Allen an Oscar for best original screenplay.
In his acceptance speech (Allen skipped the ceremony), Brickman referenced one of the film’s many oft-quoted lines, saying: “I’ve been out here a week, and I still have guilt when I make a right turn on a red light.”
“If the film is worth anything,” Brickman told Vanity Fair in 2017, “it gives a very particular specific image of what it was like to be alive in New York at that time in that particular social-economic stratum.”
Brickman and Allen had met in the early 1960s, when Allen was breaking through as a stand-up comedian. Brickman was brought on to write jokes for him. At the time, he had been playing banjo for the folk group the Tarriers. In one of the many twists of Brickman’s career, it was an album he and his college roommate Eric Weissberg recorded that later made the soundtrack to 1972’s “Deliverance,” including “Dueling Banjos.”
Brickman, born in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, was the son of Jewish socialists Abram (who fled Poland during WWII) and Pauline (Wolin) Brickman, who was from New York. They later moved to the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, where Brickman grew up. His start in show business, after graduating from the University of Wisconsin with degrees in science and music, came with the Terriers. He replaced Alan Arkin in the group.
“One of the reasons I was asked to join was because they needed somebody to front the group and talk while everybody was tuning up,” Brickman told the Writers Guild in 2011. “And so I started to develop little jokes and routines and stuff like that.”
By the late ‘60s, Brickman was head writer for Carson’s “The Tonight Show.” There, one of his most enduring contributions were the Carnac the Magnificent sketches, during which Carson played a “mystic from the East” who could divine answers to unseen questions. Brickman’s other TV stints included “Candid Camera,” “The Dick Cavett Show” and “The Muppet Show.”
When Brickman and Allen began writing together, they found a natural chemistry, with Brickman playing a supporting role to Allen’s semi-autobiographical material.
“We didn’t write scenes together. I think that’s the death for any collaboration,” Brickman told the Writers Guild. “I don’t think there’s any such thing really as an equal collaboration. I think that in any collaboration, one person, one personality, one point of view has to dominate.”
Brickman wrote and directed the 1980 film “Simon,” starring Arkin as a psychology professor brainwashed into believing he’s from outer space. He also directed 1983’s “Lovesick,” with Alec Guinness as the ghost of Sigmund Freud, and 1986’s “The Manhattan Project,” about a high schooler who builds a nuclear weapon for a school project.
With Rick Elice penning the music, Brickman wrote the Broadway musical “Jersey Boys,” about the 1960s rock group The Four Seasons. It ran on Broadway for 12 years beginning in 2005. He and Elice also wrote the 2010 musical “The Addams Family.”
Brickman is survived by his wife, Nina, daughters Sophie and Jessica, and five grandchildren.
—From AP reports
