Box Office Week: Coco easily wins the Thanksgiving 5 day weekend opening at #1 with $71.M, The Man Who Invented Christmas opened at #12 with a weak $1.8M, and Call Me By Your Name has best independent opening of the year with $404K in 4 theaters, a per theater average of $101K.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Coco	$71,200,000	$153,395,000	1
2	Justice League	$59,600,000	$481,346,643	2
3	Wonder	$32,200,000	$70,334,805	2
4	Thor: Ragnarok	$25,000,000	$790,068,394	4
5	Daddy's Home 2	$13,250,000	$87,662,166	3

• all numbers for 5 day holiday weekend

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Coco - Even when Pixar/Disney seems to be shooting itself in the foot them still make money as Coco managed to open very well this weekend at #1 with $71.2M for the five day weekend. That makes it the fourth highest grossing Thanksgiving opening ever and makes 9 of the top 10 films on that list Disney films. Thanksgiving has always been an odd weekend for the Big Mouse because it's never been their most high profile releases but generally stuff they hope will find an audience that will keep during the holidays when most of the new releases are more serious Oscar fare. Some times this strategy works to great effect, like with Frozen which holds the record still for best Thanksgiving opening and then went on to have one of the craziest multipliers ever when it ended its run over $400M. On the other side is The Good Dinosaur which opened weak then dropped like a stone ending only at $123M which is still the worst domestic haul of any Pixar film ever. Also, that film ranks as the 6th highest grossing Thanksgiving opening, so it's by no means a guarantee that audiences will latch on. The good news for Coco in the longtail is that it's been a big big hit by targeting directly to Spanish speaking audiences. Already the film has surpassed The Avengers as the highest grossing film ever released in Mexico where it has grossed $48.7M so far. Also Pixar made the wise choice of showing both the English and Spanish dub of the film in many theaters with many of the Spanish dub showings selling out and some critics saying they prefer the Spanish version. It also helps that the film earned the fantastic A+ rating on Cinemascore. Most Pixar films score an A rating but only four previous films have scored the A+ and those films (Toy Story 2, Monsters Inc, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo) were all pretty big successes.

• Coco (cont.) -The only real issue and the whole "shooting themselves in the foot" thing I referenced is that damn Frozen short. As you may well know unlike the usual 3-5 minute shorts that precede a Pixar film, Disney was so worried people wouldn't care about Coco they decided to shove Olaf's Frozen Adventure, a 21 minute made for TV holiday special, in front of the film in hopes it would attract people who were fans of Frozen but had no interest in Coco. In fact it seems the opposite has happened as many people who were excited about Coco and had no idea about the short were stunned when after ads, trailers, and the short some reported the actual film didn't start until 45 minutes after "showtime". Social media has been hammering the decision and already the short was either pulled or moved to after the showings of Coco in many Mexican cinemas. Unless Disney decides to do the same it could very well be that despite the love for the film many parents will be saying "hey Coco is good but just wait till it's on video so you can skip that short." The fact there's already many forums and Twitter threads theorizing about how to buy a reserved seat then show up exactly on time to miss the short shows how much Disney has bungled the trust the audience places on these things. Next week is going to be very key for Coco to see if A) it's chewed through a small but loyal audience and B) if that short is really going to destroy all positive word of mouth for the film.

• Justice League - Usually I don't discuss films that don't come in at #1 after their first week, but with Justice League having such a bad opening and this big 5 day weekend being an opportunity to make up some ground I figured it needed to be addressed one more time. The final opening weekend for Justice League ended up being $93.8M which is not only horrible when you consider it to be WB's $300M answer to The Avengers but even worse when it opens below solo movies like Guardians of the Galaxy and Captain America: The Winter Soldier. This weekend was a possible chance to regain some but it seems the damage was done as the film scored a pretty predictable $59.6M for the five day weekend. Right now the film stands at $171.5M domestic which is $40M lower than what Thor: Ragnarok was at after its second weekend, almost $90M less than what BvS was at in its second, and $200M less than what The Avengers was at by this point. The three day number for JL was $40.7M, a 57% drop from last week. Now to be fair that's a lot better than its predecessor Batman v Superman which has an astounding 69.1% drop in its second week (or Suicide Squad's 67% drop for its second weekend), so at least we aren't looking at the nightmare scenario where the film closes below $200M domestic. However it's nowhere near the the fantastic 43.3% drop Wonder Woman had it its second weekend so don't expect this to have the same strong longtail. Thing is Justice League has some room to grow with two weeks with almost no major wide releases until The Force Awakens, but considering it couldn't beat Coco then it's not looking like Justice League will use the full advantage of its open schedule.

• The Man Who Invented Christmas - Just because you have good reviews and good timing doesn't mean you will have a good opening as The Man Who Invented Christmas opened in 600 theaters to a pretty weak $1.8M for the five day weekend. The film starring Dan Stevens is about how Charles Dickens wrote the classic story A Christmas Carol. It definitely seemed Bleecker Street was hoping for a Finding Neverland scenario, a film which TMWIC owes a lot of its style and structure to. That film about the creation of Peter Pan debuted in a similar number of theaters on Thanksgiving of 2004 to $4.6M and went on to gross over $50M. This film doesn't seem like it will have that kind of pull and debuted to just a collective shrug with audiences. It's a capper to a rough year for Bleecker Street who have produced well reviewed movies like Logan Lucky, The Lost City of Z, and Megan Leavey which all failed to impress at the box office. It seems even when Bleecker Street have a solidly reviewed film with perfect holiday appeal on their hands they just don't have the marketing power to make people care.

• Oscar Movie Round-up - A lot of movies were vying for the adult audience this week or starting their Oscar runs so let's get to it. Also I'm doing just the three-day weekend for these ones as not all of them opened or expanded on Wednesday. The biggest release of the bunch this week was Roman J. Israel, Esq. which went wide this week and as expected it did not capture the public eye, as it opened in 1,600 theaters at #9 with $4.4M. Part of the problem may be the Rotten Tomatoes effect as this film was rated rotten going into the weekend meaning most of the audience were likely hardcore Denzealots. Unfortunately it doesn't look like RJI,E (hell of an abbreviation) will hold well either as the film scored a B on Cinemascore. If the major fans of Denzel did not appreciate the film that much and its Oscar hopes are dwindling by the hour, I don't expect this to hold very well. Most telling of its weak opening is that Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri was in 1,000 less theaters this weekend and yet came in just $100K below RJI,E, as it expanded to 600 theaters to open at #10 with $4.4M. The film is Fox's big push for Best Picture especially after it won the audience choice award at Toronto. Next week should see the wide release for the film finally and it will be interesting to see how the film is received by a major audience who may not be ready for the very intense subject matter.

• Oscar Movie Round-up (cont.)- Next up is Lady Bird which has now made over $10M so far despite being in less than 1,000 theaters. However this week the film showed a little sign of cooling as it expanded to 790 theaters but still came in below Three Billboard at #11 with $4M. The film is still inching its way to a wide release and seems to be picking up steam for a major play especially for Best Actress and maybe Best Director. Lady Bird lost another battle this week as well as it lost the title of best independent release of 2017 as the young gay romance Call Me by Your Name opened in 4 theaters to $404,874, a per theater average of $101,219, making it the only film of the year to pass a PTA of $100K. Not surprising as the film also just edged out Lady Bird as the best reviewed film of the year on Metacritic. There is some concerns about the appeal of the film's explicit sexuality with a 17 year old boy which is not a legal age in many states in the US. The actor who portrays the teenager Timothée Chalamet was 20 when the film was shot so there's no legal issues there, just more if audiences will be comfortable with such a major age gap (Armie Hammer who plays the other lover is 10 years older than Chalamet). Finally Darkest Hour, the third (yes third) film about Dunkirk that came out just this year has finally hit US shores after a good UK debut and opened to a pretty solid $176,000 on four screens, a per theater average of $44,000. The film still seems to be the major front-runner for Best Actor with Gary Oldman finally doing a transformative role in a genre the Oscars like, WWII films, as his portrayal as Winston Churchill has almost boringly locked up that race for some time. As for box office it doesn't seem like Darkest Hour will be a major hit but perhaps as buzz for Oldman ramps up it might get a boost.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Spider-man: Homecoming	$334,166,825	$880,132,609	$175M	20
Dunkirk	$188,043,731	$525,043,731	$100M	18
IT	$326,943,000	$688,043,000	$35M	11
Blade Runner 2049	$89,464,001	$252,634,258	$150M	8

Notable Film Closings

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As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice.

Submitted November 27, 2017 at 11:29PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2i9oz0w