‘Zootopia 2’ tops Thanksgiving weekend box office with $156 million

LOS ANGELES – “Zootopia 2” opened with $156 million over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend to lead all films in North America, according to industry estimates released Sunday.

Disney’s animated sequel to 2016’s smash hit grossed $96.8 million Friday through Sunday, and claimed the second-best opening ever over a Thanksgiving weekend, trailing only 2024’s “Moana 2,” which was also a Disney sequel.

“Wicked: For Good” made another $62.8 million over the three-day weekend, one week after its big $150 million opening, Comscore reported.

Third place went to “Now You See Me: Now You Don’t” with $7 million in its third weekend.

“Predator: Badlands” was fourth with $4.8 million in its fourth week in theaters, followed by “The Running Man,” which made $3.7 million in its third weekend.

“Eternity,” a romantic fantasy starring Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner, opened in sixth place with $3.1 million.

Rounding out the top 10 domestic releases were “Rental Family” ($2.1 million), “Hamnet” ($880,000), “Sisu: Road to Revenge” ($810,000) and “Nuremberg” ($749,325).

Netflix’s “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery,” the third film in director Rian Johnson’s series featuring Daniel Craig as detective Benoit Blanc, opened in selected theaters across North America on Wednesday and grossed about $4 million over the five-day weekend, according to trade publication reports. Netflix does not report box office figures.

This weekend’s overall three-day box office haul was estimated at $186 million. The year-to-date total is $7.818 billion — up 1.24% from the figure at this time last year, according to Comscore.

Record-setting global box office

“Zootopia 2” scored a staggering $556 million globally since its Wednesday opening, according to studio estimates Sunday.

That made it the highest international opening ever for an animated movie, the fourth highest global debut of any kind, and the top international opener of 2025.

“This is a great result and a big momentum builder for the box office as we head into the final four weeks of the year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore.

“Zootopia 2” arrives almost a decade after the original, a hit that outpaced expectations and had a March domestic opening of $75 million.

Like the first, it features the duo of bunny cop Judy Hopps (Ginnifer Goodwin) and small-time hustler fox Nick Wilde ( Jason Bateman ) in a city of comically domesticated wildlife.

Dergarabedian said the sequel represented “a beloved franchise delivering what audiences were looking for around the world.”

It was the fourth biggest North American opening of 2025. But its biggest market was China, which made for nearly half of the film’s global total with a whopping $272 million in ticket sales.

No American-made animated film has ever opened bigger. It was the second best nonlocal film opening of all time in China, after “Avengers: Endgame.”

(With CNS and AP reports)

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