The latest animated film from Disney, "Moana," dominated the domestic box office over Thanksgiving weekend for two weekends in a row. The adventure movie raked in an estimated $28.4 million in its first weekend in North American theaters, keeping JK Rowling's Harry Potter spinoff "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" in second place with $18.5 million.
On its first weekend, "Moana" took in $119 million worldwide while "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" earned 183.5 million in a span of three weeks. However, even with these impressive figures, the production outfit BH Tilt that also made "The Green Inferno" and "The Darkness" has declared that the Polynesian-inspired animation fell short of their expectations.
BH Tilt's John Hegeman declared "We are disappointed that we fell short of our goal and repeating the success of our previous releases." He went on to say that the company will view this film's performance as a stepping stone to making 2017 releases perform much better.
With "Moana" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" taking the top one and two spots respectively in the North American box office, the contenders for the top five also include "Arrival" at third place with $7.3 million and "Allied" in number four with $7.1 million. Benedict Cumberbatch's "Doctor Strange" took fifth place with $6.5 million.
The Disney animation's performance in the United States was not duplicated in the foreign box office, although it did quite well. The two films, "Moana" and "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" swapped places in the United Kingdom box office rankings, with the former taking gross earnings at the opening of £2.21 million (roughly $ 2.7 million) from 556 sites. The latter, however, took in £37.9 million (an estimate of $ 47.9 million) for its first 17 days at the box office.
The other films which made it to the top ten in the UK list for Dec. 2 to 4 included "Sully: Miracle on the Hudson" at third place, "Allied" fourth and "Pitbull: Tough Women" fifth, with "Arrival," "Trolls," "Bad Santa," "The Edge of Seventeen," and "Bleed for This" trailing behind.
