By Ben Miller
Thanksgiving weekend can usually be counted on for a big box office, but that was certainly not the case this year. The entire box office managed just $92.9 million for the three-day weekend. That's the lowest Thanksgiving box office weekend since 1994 (not counting 2020, obviously). Black Panther: Wakanda Forever cruised to another easy box office win, dropping a mere 31% in it's third week of release. The two new releases of Disney's Strange World and the war film Devotion both landed with relative thuds. The marketing on both has been dubious at best...
| Weekend Box Office (actuals) November 25th-27th 🔺 = new or expanding / ★ = Recommended |
|
| WIDE (OVER 800 SCREENS) | LIMITED / PLATFORM |
 BLACK PANTHER WAKANDA FOREVER |
 GLASS ONION |
| 1 BLACK PANTHER WAKANDA FOREVER $45.6 (cum. $367.5) | 1 🔺★ GLASS ONION: A KNIVES OUT MYSTERY $9.4 *NEW* 696 screens |
| 2 🔺STRANGE WORLD $12.2 *NEW* |
2 🔺★ THE FABELMANS $2.26 (cum. $3.5) 638 screens |
| 3 🔺DEVOTION $5.9 *NEW* | 3 ★ THE BANSHEES OF INISHERIN $343K (cum. $7.87) 402 screens |
| 4 ★ THE MENU $5.5 (cum. $18.9) | 4 ★ TRIANGLE OF SADNESS (sweden/uk) $115k (cum. $3.96) |
| 5 BLACK ADAM $3.3 (cum. $157.1) | 5 ★ TÁR $106k (cum. $5.1) 100 screens |
| 6 🔺 BONES AND ALL $2.26 (cum. $3.76) |
6 🔺★ THE INSPECTION $89k (cum. 169k) 32 screens |
 BONES AND ALL |
 AFTERSUN |
|
7 ★ TICKET TO PARADISE $1.86 (cum. $65) |
7 ★ TILL $87k (cum. $8.7) 107 screens |
| 8 ★ SHE SAID $1.16 (cum. $4.4) |
8 ★ AFTERSUN $47k (cum. $757k) 75 screens |
| 9 LYLE LYLE CROCODILE $940k (cum. $45.2) |
9 ★ DECISION TO LEAVE (south korea) $46k (cum. $1.9) 56 screens |
| There are only 9 movies currently in wide release | 10 ALL THE BEAUTY AND THE BLOODSHED $33k *NEW* 3 screens |
| ...that is way too few for a healthy film culture | 11 HOLY SPIDER (iran) $17k (cum. 137k) 17 screens |
| ...do better Hollywood | 12 EO $16k (cum. $49k) 2 screens |
Netflix tried its hand at a platform release, showing Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery in less than 700 theaters. It worked really well as the film grossed over $13k per screen. I don't really know Netflix's endgame with this strategy, but they at least have put plenty of eyes on the film before its streaming release at the end of the year. Elsewhere, Best Documentary Oscar-hopeful All the Beauty and the Bloodshed also managed over $10k per screen in its first week.
Don't expect things to get much better next weekend, with the Die Hard with Santa Claus film Violent Night as the sole wide release. In fact, nothing is expected to have any box office impact until Avatar: The Way of Water releases on December 16th. It's bleak times for movie theaters.
What did you see this weekend? I was not able to catch any of the new releases, but I caught up on some older films like Cat Ballou and rewatched L.A. Confidential for the 50th time.