The feast at the 2022 Thanksgiving box office was among the most meager in years as a varied menu of new films largely failed to entice mainstream moviegoers, signaling a troubled start for the year-end holiday season.
The notable exception was Marvel Studios and Disney’s Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, which maintained its top spot on the holiday box office chart for the entire five-day period from Wednesday to Sunday with a robust domestic gross of $64 million from 4,258 theaters, bringing the domestic tally to $367.7 million as of Sunday. It made an additional $32.1 million overseas over the course of the weekend to surpass $300 million globally and end Sunday with $675.6 million.
Strange World from Disney Animation, on the other hand, had a disastrous B CinemaScore and a disastrous $18.6 million five-day opening. Due to negative word-of-mouth, that was the worst Thanksgiving opening for a Disney Animation title in recent memory. Additionally, it was the first movie from the studio to have a CinemaScore below an A-. It made its overseas debut over the weekend to $9 million from 43 relevant markets for a mere $28 million global bow.
The Disney corporation is likely to lose more than $100 million on Strange World, which had a production budget of $180 million before marketing.
In its second week of release, The Menu, a Searchlight movie about culinary horror and comedy, brought in an estimated $7.4 million from 3,228 locations, bringing its domestic total to $18.7 million. For a total worldwide revenue of $12.7 million, it earned $4.1 million from 41 foreign markets.
