Box Office Week: It was the best Thanksgiving weekend in box office history, led by a massive 5-day $84.4M debut by Ralph Breaks the Internet at #1 and a great $55.8M debut by Creed II at #2. Meanwhile, Robin Hood bombed hard at #7 with $14.2M and Green Book flopped at #9 with $7.4M.

RankTitleDomestic Gross (Weekend)Worldwide Gross (Cume)Week #Percentage Change (for three-day numbers)Budget1Ralph Breaks the Internet$84,472,000$125,972,0001N/A$175M2Creed 2$55,806,000$55,806,0001N/A$50M3Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald$42,900,000$215,742,2502-21.7%$200M4Dr. Seuss' The Grinch (2018)$42,000,000$439,717,2383-52.3%$75M5Bohemian Rhapsody$19,370,000$472,170,5794-13.6%$52M* all numbers are for 5-day Thanksgiving weekendNotable Box Office StoriesRalph Breaks the Internet - It was the best Thanksgiving weekend haul in box office history and much of that is thanks to the little big guy who could and the power of so much Disney merchandising as Ralph Breaks the Internet opened at #2 to $84.5M. That's the second biggest Thanksgiving opening for a film, behind only Frozen with $93.5M. The sequel to the 2012 film Wreck-It Ralph sees the video game character leaving his arcade homeworld for the internet, which allowed Disney to explore a similar avenue to the LEGO Movies which use the entire library of Warner Bros for their characters. RBTI does the same indulging in Star Wars, Marvel, and of course the entire Disney princess lineup. Because of this and the slow rise in esteem for Ralph 1 on cable and streaming has allowed Ralph 2 to open with almost half of the the original film's domestic gross in a single weekend.Ralph Breaks the Internet (cont.) - The film has a wide open field to play in for the foreseeable future. There is only one new wide release planned in the next two weekends (a horror film) and there won't be a new animated film until Into the Spider-Verse in three weeks, which itself feels more like a play for teenage and up audiences than RBTI. The film got great reviews and an A- on Cinemascore (a grade lower than Wreck-It Ralph) so legs should be fairly strong. Internationally though is where Ralph's fate is harder to see. It debuted to $41.5M overseas, mostly led by a very good $19.5M debut in China. However, the film has a verrrrrrry slow roll-out to the international space, with some major markets not getting the film until February. New Zealand isn't getting the film until the heat death of the universe! That's just too long to wait guys. So overall things are looking good for Ralph and this new genre breaking way for him to play in all kinds of spaces could give the character the kind of franchise longevity that other popular characters don't really have. I mean maybe I can see Winnie the Pooh making a movie where the title is a reference to a famous nude photo spread but I dunno, feels crass.Creed 2 - Can you put a value on an amazing set of abs? I feel you can and that value is a 5-day $55.8M Thanksgiving weekend haul at #2 for Creed 2. Okay sure, maybe some people went to see the film as it was a continuation of the acclaimed and commercially successful reboot of the long running and very successful Rocky franchise. But come on, abs are what really sold the tickets here. How else can you explain the interesting change of demo where the first film played to an audience that was 66% male to now an audience that was 57% male? Abs baby. Creed 2 was a pretty interesting play all around. The film did not retain the first film's director Ryan Coogler (who's off making buco dollores with Black Panther 1-17) but it did give the character the ultimate villain, the son of Ivan Drago. It's the perfect popcorn-ification of an already fun film and it played well to a Thanksgiving adult audience with 64% of the audience over the age of 25. In fact it's now the biggest live-action debut on Thanksgiving weekend, making it just one of two films on the top 10 of Thanksgiving weekend list that are not a Disney animated film. And with an A rating on Cinemascore (we know what the A stands for) this should have great legs especially as once again, there is just one new wide releases in the next two weekends. Shine on you crazy abs, you're gonna be a star!Robin Hood (2018) - So in what must be the most shocking twist of the year a woke gritty remake of Robin Hood that says "yo what if Robin Hood was antifa" was kind of a huge bomb! Crazy I know, as Robin Hood (2018) opened to a horrendous #7 with $14.2M. Remember that's on a budget of $100M which is ludicrous on several levels. Its three-day haul didn't even crack $10M. Overseas it didn't fare much better scoring just $8.7M. I think it's safe to say this is easily one of, if not the single biggest bombs of 2018. Normally I'd break down what went wrong but, come on. This is like an autopsy on a corpse with 50 bullet holes, you probably know how it died. A Robin Hood film hasn't been a major box office hit since the 1991's Robin Hood: Prince of the Thieves which was admittedly a massive hit at the time but is now more famous for the bad Costner accent and the parody film Men in Tights. And making a gritty woke Hood with flashes of MCU style origin storytelling is just weird and ridiculous. Robin Hood is one of those characters everyone knows but no one cares about. No one theorizes on who will play the next Robin Hood. No one nitpicks the Robin Hood costume redesign. No one shares leaked footage from the Robin Hood set and says "you think that's the Sheriff? Maybe they are saving him for the post-credit scene". No one cares Hollywood so please, stop. And maybe after this big of a bomb they finally will...for another 8 years before they try to shove Robin Hood into whatever the current trend of 2026 will be. Sigh.Green Book - While Robin Hood's bombing was about as expected as the sun rise this one was more surprising as Green Book, Universal's big Oscar play this year about racial understanding and equality, failed to capture the excitement of the mass audience it was expecting as it expanded to 1,000 theaters with $7.4M for the five-day weekend. That's not awful for the $23M budgeted film but it's not great either especially when the entire narrative of this thing was its audience pleasing qualities. The film jumped up the Oscar race at the Toronto International Film Festival where it surprised winning the audience award, a practically guaranteed precursor to a Best Picture nomination. The film seemed to be poised to become the next Hidden Figures, a massive breakout success that would overcome the faults of its maudlin portrayal of complex race issues with sheer force of general audience goodwill. So the weird thing is everything wass there except the audience showing up. The film has good reviews and a great A+ rating on Cinemascore so it could have had amazing legs (and still might). The marketing was pretty omnipresent and strong. But it just didn't play. Could be it's just too crowded a market place right now and Green Book would have benefitted more from a slower platform release with wide hitting next weekend or the week after. As it stands without that key audience support it just doesn't feel like Green Book will be the big spoiler people were expecting and just gives more power to the A Star is Born juggernaut.Oscar Movie Round-Up - (all of these numbers will be for the three-day weekend as there wasn't clear numbers outside of the top 10) Green Book wasn't the only Oscar hopeful that expanded this weekend to less than stellar results as The Front Runner proved its title wrong once again as the weakly reviewed film about Gary Hart's career ending sex scandal added almost 800 theaters but made just $885K, a terrible $1,097 per theater average. The film just felt like the worst film right now for this political moment and failed to get the kind of buzz it would need to get people out to the theater. In better news The Favourite, the latest from provocateur and professional weirdo Yorgos Lanthimos, had a fantastic debut in 4 theaters to $420K, a phenomenal per theater average of $105K. That's not only the best per theater average of the year, it tops Moonlight to become the best PTA of the last 3 years. The film starring Emma Stone and Rachel Weisz was a major festival hit and is something of a departure for Yorgos who is only directing, though this project has been in development for him since his first big breakout hit Dogtooth. While like every Yorgos film it has its haters this is the one that feels like it could bring him out from the critically acclaimed indie world into the big time, and this debut will certainly help with that as it slowly expands into a wide release around Christmas. Finally this weekend saw the release of Shoplifters, the Palme d'Or winning Japanese film that's a potential favorite for Best Foreign Language Film. It was released in 5 theaters to $88K, a per theater average of $17.6K. While not amazing it's a pretty good debut for a foreign language indie and could build some interest in the core voting cities (LA and NY) with Academy members.Films Reddit Wants to FollowThis 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.TitleDomestic Gross (Weekly)Domestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetWeek #Incredibles 2$130,012$608,507,207$1,240,322,133$200M24Crazy Rich Asians$313,126$173,765,895$236,465,895$30M15Venom$2,826,577$211,707,620$822,507,620$100M8A Star is Born (2018)$6,509,266$191,005,173$353,405,173$36M8First Man$352,520$44,576,830$98,776,830$59M7Notable Film ClosingsTitleDomestic Gross (Cume)Worldwide Gross (Cume)BudgetSearching$26,020,957$70,447,122$1.5M (est.)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 (which have recently been updated).My Letterboxd: https://ift.tt/2Q79jjT via /r/movies https://ift.tt/2r74KYI