As a seasoned moviegoer who has witnessed the rise and fall of countless box office trends, I must say that the post-Thanksgiving weekend has always been a fascinating enigma. It’s like a ghost town at your local multiplex, a stark contrast to the bustling crowds during Thanksgiving itself or the holiday season.
2024’s Thanksgiving is poised to be a blockbuster event in cinematic history. The second installment of “Moana” has already smashed box office records within its first two days, while “Wicked” and “Gladiator II” continue to draw impressive crowds. This Thanksgiving weekend at the box office underscores yet another instance where audiences are eager to devour a variety of films. For movie studio executives, the Thanksgiving holiday is one of the most consistently profitable periods throughout the year.
Following the high earnings during the Thanksgiving weekend, one of the most sluggish periods for box office sales usually occurs the subsequent weekend. This period, often on the last weekend of November or the first weekend in December, is notoriously quiet at your neighborhood cinema. It’s puzzling to understand why this post-Thanksgiving box office weekend consistently proves to be a box office void, especially given the recent abundance of earnings.
Post-Thanksgiving Weekend Never Has New Movies
Up until 2003, films such as “The Last Samurai” and “Honey” were among those released after Thanksgiving, each raking in over $10 million during their opening weekends. In fact, “The Last Samurai” opened with a strong $24.27 million and continued to play in theaters until the end of the year. However, the failure of “Æon Flux” in 2005 signaled a change in this trend. Remarkably, that same year, “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” broke new ground by earning over $100 million during November – a significant feat, considering it was still generating revenue even beyond the post-Thanksgiving weekend.
As more failures like “Æon Flux” emerged and a growing number of profitable pre-Thanksgiving blockbusters flooded the market, studios started avoiding the weekend following Thanksgiving. A mere six years later, only three new wide releases – “Brothers”, “Armored”, and “Everybody’s Fine” – were launched, none of which earned more than $10 million during their opening weekends. In 2012, Ray Subers of Box Office Mojo noted that it had been seven years since a film debuted with earnings of $10+ million during this post-Thanksgiving timeframe and that no new wide releases opened in 2011.
After significant film studios typically avoid releasing films during this period, a harmful pattern has persisted following Thanksgiving. Since no new films are usually shown during this weekend, it’s believed that successful movies struggle to succeed in this niche. Moreover, the post-Thanksgiving weekend is often an inconvenient time of year when people have various other matters on their minds, such as holiday shopping and seasonal activities. Furthermore, many individuals save their resources for the influx of new movies arriving with Christmas. Consequently, it’s challenging to debut a captivating new movie during this weekend.
The Few Modern Post-Thanksgiving Hits
2015 marked a significant milestone in cinema history, not only because Star Wars returned to our screens or Carol reshaped the industry, but also due to an unexpected triumph. For the first time since Aeon Flux, a new film managed to gross over $10 million during the post-Thanksgiving period. The film, Krampus, surpassed all expectations with a whopping $16.3 million opening weekend. This breakthrough served as a reminder that the post-Thanksgiving slot isn’t an industry graveyard, but rather a platform for success stories like Krampus to shine.
Following that, only two more films have been launched widely during the post-Thanksgiving weekend since then. The gritty Universal Pictures movie “Violent Night” opened to $13.4 million in early December 2022, while “Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé” debuted with a massive $22 million the following year, setting the second-largest opening weekend after Thanksgiving, surpassed only by The Last Samurai from 2003. Although these two strong early December blockbusters occurred in succession, the post-Thanksgiving season of 2024 lacks a major tentpole release. However, it will still showcase around six new wide releases, marking a significant change compared to the scarcity of fresh films during early December 2011.
Old habits die hard, even in the glitzy world of Hollywood. That means the post-Thanksgiving slot will likely remain a box office dead zone in the near future, simply because that’s been the norm for so long in Hollywood. Then again, 2025 will see Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 open over this weekend. Perhaps that potential mega-horror hit will finally upend this timeframe’s reputation as a dumping ground for new theatrical releases. It would be fitting for that to happen 20 years after Æon Flux seemed to cement post-Thanksgiving as the worst possible time of year to launch a new motion picture.
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2024-12-01 18:09