Black Panther: Wakanda Forever dominates as the pre-Thanksgiving offerings prove to be more famine than feast.
Usually, the weekend before Thanksgiving sees the openings of some of the biggest films of the season. In previous years, that weekend saw the arrival of Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Frozen II, and multiple Harry Potters, Twilights, and Hunger Games. This year, however, with the month's 800-pound panther having opened just the weekend before, this year's pre-Thanksgiving offerings were more meager than usual.
Topping the charts for the second weekend in a row was Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which dropped a decent 63% from its opening, to $66.5 million, bringing its ten-day total to $287.2 million. That keeps it roughly even with Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness through two weeks, but is already off the pace, both in terms of second-weekend gross and overall gross after ten days, of Top Gun: Maverick, meaning that even with a Thanksgiving-fueled boost, Wakanda is already likely out of the running for highest grossing film of 2022. Indeed, it's also well off where the first Black Panther was after two weekends in 2018, meaning that this is likely to finish much closer to Strange's $400 million than Panther's $700 million.
Finishing a distant second was The Menu, the pitch black comedy about a renowned chef (Ralph Finnes) who has plans for his carefully selected clientele (including Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, and John Leguizamo) beyond that night's dinner. Buoyed by good reviews, it opened to a solid $9 million, and seemed poised to play well through the holidays.
Last year, Christmas With the Chosen: The Messengers, a concert film spun-off from an independent streaming series about the life of Jesus, had a surprisingly large opening. With season 3 coming up, the producers decided to see if they could replicate that. The experiment worked, as The Chosen Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2 opened to an impressive $8.8 million. Messengers faded very fast, and with the streaming debut of the episodes coming up soon (though no exact date has been announced yet), I wouldn't expect the episodes to stick around the Top 10 for very long. However, don't be surprised if this encourages the big streamers to start releasing the first episodes of their high-profile series in theaters. There's likely an audience to see the next episodes of The Mandalorian, Rings of Power, House of the Dragon, or Stranger Things on the big screen.
The other "black" superhero film, Black Adam took in $4.6 million, for a total of $157.1 million. Ticket to Paradise continues to have solid legs, making $3.2 million for a total of $61.6 million.
Opening somewhat dismally in sixth, She Said, a dramatization of the takedown of Harvey Weinstein by two determined New York Times reporters, could only come up with $2.2 million. That's less than half of what the somewhat similar Bombshell did in its first wide-release weekend three years ago. This one is getting good word of mouth, but it seems destined to join the season's other Oscar contenders that have not been able to translate critical acclaim into solid earnings.
As the reign of Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile as the only family film in town comes to an end, it took in $1.9 million for a total of $43.2 million. Also heading for the exits after a long, highly successful run is Smile, which is grinning all the way to the bank with $1.2 million and a total of $104.6 million.
Rounding out the Top 10 are horror film Prey for the Devil and Oscar contender The Banshees of Inisherin. Their totals stand at $18.4 million and $7.2 million, respectively.
As usual on Thanksgiving week, the newcomers hit the theaters on Wednesday. Leading the charge, with the best chance of taking down its stablemate Black Panther is Strange World, the latest from Disney animation, about a family of adventurers who have to go on an adventure to the titular land to save their home. After all the controversary over the summer about Lightyear's relatively minor lesbian character, its rather surprising that there's been hardly any discussion as to the fact that this film's lead character (voiced by out comedian Jaboukie Young-White) is openly gay, probably because Fox News is still melting down over the midterms to worry about what Disney is up to now. At any rate, they'll probably catch on soon enough, unfortunately. Also out is Devotion, a drama about the first African-American pilot in the US Navy (Jonathan Majors). This one is going for the dad audience that made Ford vs. Ferrari a big hit three years ago. After opening in limited release last weekend, Bones and All, the rather gory tale of two young cannibals (Timothée Chalamet and Taylor Russell) in love, arrives just in time for Thanksgiving. Opening semi-wide is The Fablemans, Steven Spielberg's autobiographic drama about a movie-mad Jewish kid growing up in the 50s and 60s, and Glass Onion, the Knives Out sequel that has Daniel Craig trying once again to figure out which member of the all-star cast dunit. The latter, sadly, is a Netflix release, which means we're not going to see any hard numbers on it. As for the others, will any of them have a chance of taking down Panther, or will it really seem like Wakanda will rule Forever? We'll find out next week, and until then, Happy Thanksgiving!
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