Black Panther: Wakanda Forever Rules While Strange World Bombs On Thanksgiving Weekend
"Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" will win Thanksgiving weekend at the box office, but another film's losses are just as noteworthy as its wins. According to Variety, the Disney animated film "Strange World" has made just $11.8 million domestically since Thursday — an unusually abysmal opening for the company, though not entirely surprising given the virtually non-existent marketing. The sci-fi adventure flick isn't the biggest Disney animation flop of all time, but it's a weak opening for a film with what the outlet reports is a $180 million production budget.
While families apparently didn't warm to the Jake Gyllenhaal and Jaboukie Young-White-led film, Ryan Coogler's long-anticipated "Black Panther" sequel did get a bump from viewers who decided to squeeze in a screening on Turkey Day or Black Friday. "Wakanda Forever" had an impressive $18.2 million haul on Friday which brings the first half of its four day weekend numbers to $26.3 according to Variety.
Now three weekends into its run, "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" has already survived the same fairly steep second weekend drop that has plagued other Phase 4 Marvel movies, but it's reportedly still on track to cross the $350 million mark domestically by the start of next week. "Strange World," meanwhile, will have a steep uphill battle towards recouping costs, though /Film's Josh Spiegel writes that the family film has indelible imagery and an "adventurous spirit" that is "genuine and thrilling."
The mystery of Glass Onion's box office numbers
There is, of course, a dark horse contender at the box office this week, and it's one whose ticket sales data is being kept secret. Rian Johnson's successful and lucrative mystery "Knives Out" made nearly eight times its budget in 2019, as /Film's Ryan Scott points out in his "Tales From the Box Office" spotlight on the film. Now, Daniel Craig's Benoit Blanc is back for "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery," a Netflix original film that's being given a single-week theatrical release in theaters before hitting the streamer a month later on December 23, 2022.
I'm not sure how many people realize that if they don't see "Glass Onion" this week, they'll be stuck without the answers to the latest whodunnit until Christmastime (no one I talked to this week did!), and we may never know for sure, since Netflix has a long-standing policy of not releasing box office numbers for its occasional theatrical releases. Still, "Glass Onion" is expected to do well this weekend, with The Hollywood Reporter citing sources that put its projected numbers at upwards of $12 million. This would make it the weekend's third biggest earner, helped along by a wider theatrical release than Netflix has ever given any of its titles before.
"Glass Onion" is showing in approximately 600 theaters per Variety, with options at AMC, Cinemark, and Regal. If the film rakes in the dough, you'd think Netflix would want to share that info for marketing purposes, and it could also pave the way for future theatrical experiments from a streamer that's had a rough year overall.