Universal/Blumhouse’s “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” is lighting up what is usually a slow post-Thanksgiving box office weekend with a $29.8 million opening day from 3,412 locations, putting the video game horror sequel on pace for a $56.5 million opening weekend.
While well short of the Blumhouse record $80 million opening that the first “Five Nights” earned in October 2023, it is still more than enough to make this sequel another box office success and beats pre-release projections of a $40 million start. That’s thanks to strong walk-up sales from Gen Z fans of Scott Cawthon’s horror games, who made up the overwhelming majority of the audience for the first film.
The one bad piece of news is that “FNAF2” isn’t as well received with those fans as its predecessor. While the first “Five Nights” earned an A- on CinemaScore, particularly high for any horror film, the sequel has earned a B that is more in line with what the genre gets from the audience polling system. “Five Nights” isn’t expected to make much beyond this weekend — hence why it was set for the usually barren post-Thanksgiving slot –but we will see if the somewhat weaker reception among fans affects turnout on Saturday and Sunday.
Disney’s “Zootopia 2” is second on the charts with $10.2 million on Friday, putting the film on pace for a $45 million second weekend that’s a solid 55% drop from its $100 million Friday-to-Sunday total over Thanksgiving weekend. The animated sequel is set to reach $222 million in the U.S. and blow past $425 million in China on Sunday as it steams towards the $1 billion mark.
The big surprise is what’s happening to Universal’s “Wicked: For Good,” which is running out of steam fast with an estimated third weekend of $15.6 million. That is a staggering 75% drop from the musical’s $61.7 million FSS total last weekend and less than half of the $36.7 million that the first “Wicked” made on post-Thanksgiving weekend last year.
“Wicked: For Good” was expected to be more frontloaded than its predecessor. But whether it is because word-of-mouth beyond hardcore fans isn’t strong or the film’s more tragic tone is discouraging the rewatches that the first film earned, it is quickly falling behind that film’s 2024 pace. The film is currently estimated for a three-weekend total of $295 million, 8% behind the $322 million earned by “Wicked” to this point.
Also opening this weekend is Gkids’ “Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution,” the latest film from the hit anime series which is estimated for a $10.2 million weekend from 1,833 locations, including Imax screens. After the success of Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and the Heron” two years ago, expect the post-Thanksgiving weekend to be a popular release slot for anime films trying to draw one weekend’s worth of fans to theaters in years to come.
More to come…
