Box Office: ‘The Croods 2’ Tops Thanksgiving By Default

In a sane world, we’d be discussing the opening weekend grosses for Kelly Marie Tran’s Raya and the Last Dragon along Kristen Stewart and Makenzie Davis’ same-sex holiday rom-com Happiest Season. Instead, Happiest Season premiered on Hulu two days ago and the aforementioned Walt Disney
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animated adventure will open, one hopes, theatrically on March 12, 2021. In a slight irony, DreamWorks and Universal’s The Croods: A New Age co-stars, among many others, Kelly Marie Tran. Anyway, The Croods: A New Age, which Universal intentionally opened theatrically over Thanksgiving weekend so as to have it become available on PVOD by Christmas, earned $1.9 million on Wednesday and jumped 46% for a $2.7 million Thursday gross. It has earned $4.6 million heading into the traditional Fri-Sun weekend.

In case the obvious needs to be stated, nobody was expecting theatrical numbers anywhere near a normal DreamWorks animated feature. That includes both The Croods (which opened with $43 million in 2013) and The Penguins of Madagascar (which disappointed with a $35 million debut over Thanksgiving 2014. What Universal is arguably hoping for is a modest theatrical release which spurs word of mouth for the film’s PVOD launch, which in turn pulls in numbers on par with Trolls: World Tour. Although it should be noted that The Croods: A New Age cost around $65 million, well below the $90 million spent on Trolls 2 and way below the $135 million spent on The Croods. As such, PVOD numbers on par with World Tour ($95 million in the first 19 days and an entire summer spent atop the VOD charts) isn’t a requirement.

As far as opening weekend, it is slightly unusual in today’s landscape for new releases to rise from Wednesday to Thursday (although not unprecedented). That said, Croods 2 isn’t a breathlessly anticipated title, there’s essentially nothing else of its ilk to see in theaters and we’re dealing with grosses 1/4 to 1/3 of what would be expected for a movie like this in normal times. That said, if this upswing continues, we could see a Wed-Sun debut over/under $15.5 million. I guess that’s a “success,” as it’ll also mean the biggest Fri-Sun debut since Onward in March, even bigger than Tenet’s $9.4 million U.S. launch (during a $20 million 11-day domestic debut) in late August. By normal standards, this would be a disaster, but these are disastrous times for movie theaters.

For what it’s worth, the Nicolas Cage/Emma Stone/Ryan Reynolds animated film earned $3 million on Thursday in China, which is actually the third-biggest Hollywood opening day for the year behind Mulan and Tenet. Wonder Woman 1984, scheduled to launch in China on December 18, is tracking relatively well and could be the year’s first and only Hollywood blockbuster in China. Offhand, a $12 million Thurs-Sun launch, followed by a standard 2.25x multiplier could give DWA’s animated sequel a halfway decent $25-$30 million finish. In random trivia, The Croods: A New Age will mark Comcast’s
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fifth straight weekend atop the domestic box office (thanks to Come Play, Let Him Go and Freaky), a streak unlikely to end until Wonder Woman 1984 launches in theaters (and concurrently on HBO Max) on Christmas Day.