‘Hunger Games’ feasts, ‘Napoleon’ conquers but ‘Wish’ doesn’t come true at Thanksgiving box office

NEW YORK (AP)

The Walt Disney Co.’s Wish had been expected to rule the Thanksgiving weekend box office, but movie-goers instead feasted on leftovers, as The Hunger Games: Songbirds and Snakes led ticket sales for the second weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

Neither of the weekend’s top new releases – Wish and Ridley Scott’s Napoleon – could keep up with Lionsgate’s Hunger Games prequel. After debuting the previous weekend with $44.6 million, the return to Panem proved the top draw for holiday movie-goers, grossing $28.8 million over the weekend and $42 million over the five-day holiday frame.

In two weeks of release, Songbirds and Snakes, has grossed nearly $100 million domestically and $200 million globally.

The closer contest was for second place, where Napoleon narrowly outmaneuvered Wish. Scott’s epic outperformed expectations to take $32.5 million over the five-day weekend and an estimated $20.4 million Friday through Sunday. The film, starring Joaquin Phoenix as the French emperor and Vanessa Kirby as his wife Joséphine de Beauharnais, was also the top movie globally with $78.8 million.

Reviews were mixed (61 per cent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and ticket buyers were non-plussed (a “B” CinemaScore), but Napoleon fared far better in theatres than its subject did at Waterloo.

Napoleon, like Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon, is a big-budget statement by Apple Studios of the streamer’s swelling Hollywood ambitions. With an estimated budget of $200 million, Napoleon may still have a long road to reach profitability for Apple, but it’s an undeniably strong beginning for an adult-skewing 168-minute historical drama.

Wish, however, had been supposed to have a more starry-eyed start. Disney Animation releases like Frozen II ($123.7 million over five days in 2019); Ralph Breaks the Internet ($84.6 million in 2018); and Coco ($71 million in 2017) have often owned Thanksgiving movie-going.

But Wish wobbled, coming in with $31.7 million over five days and $19.5 million Friday through Sunday.

Wish at least, is faring better than Disney’s Thanksgiving release last year: 2022’s Strange World bombed with a five-day $18.9 million opening. But hopes had been higher for Wish, co-written and co-directed by the Frozen team of Chris Buck and Jennifer Lee and featuring the voices of Ariana DeBose and Chris Pine. Wish, a fairy tale centred around a wished-upon star, is also a celebration of Disney, itself, timed to the studio’s 100th anniversary and rife with call-backs to Disney favourites.

But instead of righting an up-and-down year for Disney, Wish is, for now, adding to some of the studio’s recent headaches, including the underperforming The Marvels.

Still, the storybook is not written yet on Wish. It could follow the lead of Pixar’s Elemental, which launched with a lukewarm $29.6 million in June, but found its legs, ultimately grossing nearly $500 million worldwide.

Wish also faced direct competition for families in Trolls Band Together. The DreamWorks and Universal Pictures release opened a week prior, and took in $17.5 million in its second frame ($25.3 million over five days).

Also entering wide-release over the holiday weekend was Emerald Fennell’s Saltburn, the writer-director’s follow-up to 2020’s Promising Young Woman. After debuting in seven packed theaters last weekend, Saltburn grossed about $3 million over five days for Amazon and MGM. Barry Keoghan stars as an Oxford student befriended by a rich classmate (Jacob Elordi) and invited to his family’s country manor.