6-Week Box Office Tracking & Forecasts: Disney's ZOOTOPIA 2 ($115-130M+ 3-Day) Could Rival MOANA 2’s $139.8M Thanksgiving Record; WICKED: FOR GOOD Pre-Sales Formidable, Pacing for Potential $155M+
A three-month drought in animated releases and tons of goodwill for the original film could help Disney enjoy back-to-back Thanksgiving helpings with ZOOTOPIA 2.
A preview of this report appears on Box Office Theory’s website.
Key Tracking Factors & Rationale:
November 26:
Thanksgiving weekend is positioned as another powerhouse frame with Disney’s Zootopia 2 offering up the first major studio animated release since The Bad Guys 2 in August. The previous film opened to $75.1 million domestically in 2016, which still sands as the sixth best in history for an original (non-IP-based) narrative film.
Though Lilo & Stitch and How to Train Your Dragon filled some of the void, 2025 overall has lacked the type of event-level animated phenom on the level of last year’s Inside Out 2 or Moana 2. Pent-up demand could combine very favorably with goodwill toward the 2017 predecessor ($341 million domestically / $1.02 billion globally) and a lucrative holiday runway extending through Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s.
While 2024’s co-existence of Wicked and Moana 2 somewhat nullifies this cautionary factor, this year’s Wicked: For Good is expected to perform stronger than its own predecessor during opening days and could see some crossover family audience competition with Zootopia 2. Ultimately, though, it’s the time of year when families are most likely to see more than one film, while the Wicked films skew more strongly toward adult women. Zootopia 2‘s more direct kiddie competition will come much later in December with Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants.
A24’s Eternity looks to counter-program with a rom-drama led by Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller, and Callum Turner. The holiday release has already received positive early reviews on the film festival circuit and should bring out A24 faithful in tandem with potential casual date night audience appeal.
Also opening over the five-day Thanksgiving frame is Rian Johnson’s Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery. Details surrounding the extent of Netflix’s latest and brief foray into theaters remain to be seen, but it’s generally assumed the film will at least receive a five-day window and location count comparable to 2022’s Glass Onion. Once again, grosses are likely to be unofficially reported by sources outside Netflix.
Wicked: For Good update:
Meanwhile, the aforementioned sequel has shown few signs of slowing down in pre-sale activity as it remains well ahead of the first entry at the same point. While it still remains to be seen how much more front-loading results from that film’s zeitgeist-smashing success last year, For Good is clearly headed for one of the best musical box office openings ever. Could it rival Beauty and the Beast‘s $174.8 million? Time will tell.
6-Week Box Office Calendar, Tracking & Forecasts
as of 10/16/25
(click or tap chart to expand)
