Listen to our full discussion and analysis of the Holiday 2025 box office on The Boxoffice Podcast
Week 48 | Thanksgiving 2025 | November 26–30
Disney’s Zootopia 2 will be the only new wide release during a Thanksgiving weekend that will try to match or surpass the record numbers in 2024. To get there, it’ll need a major assist from Universal’s Wicked for Good, fresh off its opening weekend and expected to contest the animated title for the top spot. The original Wicked only dropped -28% on a three-day basis in its sophomore frame, bringing in $97.5 million on a four-day basis and $118.2 million through the entire five-day holiday weekend. We expect similar holds for the sequel. Paramount’s The Running Man should help round out business in a similar manner to last year’s Gladiator II, which helped deliver a 10% market share of the five-day holiday weekend box office.
Netflix is expected to play a role at the multiplex this Thanksgiving with its release of Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery, which will be exclusively in theaters from November 26 until its subscription video on demand streaming debut on December 12. Glass Onion, the streamer’s prior entry in the Knives Out franchise, brought in $13.2 million in its theatrically-exclusive Thanksgiving 2022 bow. Holdover business should continue to trickle in during week two of Searchlight’s Rental Family, which garnered strong notices at this year’s Toronto Film Festival. On the specialty side, look for Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet among the weekend’s best per-screen averages in its platform debut.
Year-Over-Year Comps
Week 48 | Thanksgiving 2024 | Cumulative Gross
$276.7M 3-Day Weekend | $333.4M 4-Day Weekend | $423.9M 5-Day Weekend
Week 48 | Thanksgiving 2024 | Top Three
Moana 2 (Disney)
- $139.7M 3-Day | $167.5M 4-Day | $225.4M 5-Day
- Week 1 | 4,200 Screens
Wicked (Universal)
- $81.1M 3-Day | $97.9M 4-Day | $118.2M 5-Day
- Week 2 | 3,888 Screens
Gladiator II (Paramount)
- $31M 3-Day | $37.7M 4-Day | $44.2M 5-Day
- Week 2 | 3,580 Screens
Week 49 | Post-Thanksgiving Weekend 2025 | December 5–7
Universal delivers the weekend’s only new wide release with the Blumhouse horror sequel, Five Nights at Freddy’s 2. Blumhouse is currently going through one of its roughest stretches at the domestic box office, but it should have its biggest hit of the year with this title. The original Five Nights at Freddy’s posted the best day-and-date streaming/theatrical simultaneous release of all-time when it came out in October 2023 with an $80 million box office bow. Subsequent weeks fared poorly due to its availability on Universal’s Peacock streaming app, a strategic mistake that won’t affect the theatrically-exclusive sequel.
Anime title Jujutsu Kaisen: Execution from GKIDS could be a mid-table performer based on the $18 million opening weekend of 2021’s Jujutsu Kaisen 0. On the specialty side, Neon will expand the platform roll-out of Kleber Mendonça Filho’s Brazilian political thriller The Secret Agent to Los Angeles, while Sony Pictures Classics will release the Broadway live capture of Merrily We Roll Along in limited release.
Year-Over-Year Comps
Week 49 | 2024 Post-Thanksgiving | Cumulative Gross
$129.5M
Week 49 | 2024 Post-Thanksgiving Weekend | Top Three
Moana 2 (Disney)
- $51.2M | Week 2 | 4,200 Screens
Wicked (Universal)
- $36.4M Week 3 | 3,885 Screens
Gladiator II (Paramount)
- $12.5M | Week 3 | 3,654 Screens
Week 50 | December 12–14
The quiet before the storm. No studio proved brave enough to open a new wide release a week ahead of the premiere of Disney’s Avatar: Fire and Ash. Instead, Disney’s 20th Century Studios division will roll out James L. Brooks’ adult-skewing political comedy-drama, Ella McCay. This is Brooks’ first feature as a director since 2010’s How Do You Know ($30.2 million), which provides a realistic benchmark for Ella McCay in a crowded holiday corridor. Focus Features will also be expanding Chloe Zhao’s Hamnet during this frame, making it a compelling draw for mature audiences looking to catch up on awards season contenders. Warner Bros. joins the host of studios bringing out repertory titles during quiet weekends on the calendar with the 45th anniversary rerelease of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. This will be the quietest stretch of the holiday season, and we anticipate a cumulative gross under $100 million for the entire frame, likely featuring a trio of holdovers in the top three.
Year-Over-Year Comps
Week 50 2024 | Cumulative Gross
$94.2M
Week 50 2024 | Top Three
Moana 2 (Disney)
- $26.4M | Week 3 | 4,000 Screens
Wicked (Universal)
- $22.6M | Week 4 | 3,689 Screens
Kraven the Hunter (Sony)
- $11M | Week 1 | 3,211 Screens
Week 51 | December 19–21
The wait for the third installment of James Cameron’s Avatar franchise will finally end when Avatar: Fire and Ash from Disney’s 20th Century Studios debuts on December 19. The series’ prior installment, Avatar: The Way of Water, opened modestly by blockbuster standards, grossing $134.1 million over the equivalent weekend in 2022. The real power of this title shone through in subsequent weeks, filling theaters throughout January 2023 en route to a $684 million domestic haul. We anticipate a similar performance from Fire and Ash, with a solid first frame that will carry over into 2026 thanks to sustained demand for showtimes on premium screens.
Avatar will be counterprogrammed by a number of studio and specialty titles. Paramount’s The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants should help elevate the weekend to among the year’s best. The last theatrical outing from this animated franchise, 2015’s The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, posted a $55.3 million bow and $162.9 million domestic run. That’s in line with our expectations for Search for Squarepants throughout the holiday season.
Adult audiences seeking something more substantial than popcorn fare will have a range of options. Lionsgate pushed up its Paul Feig–directed thriller, The Housemaid, to this slot from its original Christmas date. The Housemaid stars Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney in a domestic-set, seductive thriller aimed at young adult audiences. Our principal comp at this stage of the marketing campaign is Feig’s 2018 comedy-thriller, A Simple Favor, another Lionsgate film that leveraged two female stars, Blake Lively and Anna Kendrick, to a $16 million debut and $53 million domestic run.
Look for a potential sleeper hit in Angel Studios’ animated Biblical epic, David. The film was a late addition to the 2025 Holiday release schedule, replacing Angel Studios’ Zero A.D. on the same release date. We believe there is higher upside in David, a family title with only incidental competition from Search for Squarepants, than there was with Zero A.D. Angel has already proven what it could do with Biblical animated stories with this Easter’s King of Kings, which opened to $19M and legged out to $60M domestic. David should have a similar runway to connect and thrive with audiences through the entire month of January.
On the specialty side, Bradley Cooper’s latest directorial effort, Is This Thing On?, will hit its first batch of theaters on December 19. The comedy-drama title premiered at the New York Film Festival and stars Will Arnett as a recently divorced man who finds his true calling in middle age as a stand-up comic.
Year-Over-Year Comps
Week 51 2024 | Cumulative Gross
$142.1M
Week 51 2024 | Top Three
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Paramount)
- $60.1M | Week 1 | 3,761 Screens
Mufasa: The Lion King (Disney)
- $35.4M | Week 1 | 4,100 Screens
Wicked (Universal)
- $14.1M | Week 5 | 3,296 Screens
Week 52 | Christmas Weekend | December 25–28
The final full weekend of 2025 will give exhibitors an extended four-day Christmas frame of holiday grosses. Avatar: Fire and Ash should continue to dominate the market by keeping a high percentage of premium screens in North America, but it’s anyone’s guess which titles place elsewhere in the top ten. Sony will release the weekend’s biggest new title with its comedy remake of Anaconda, starring Paul Rudd and Jack Black.
On the specialty side, Focus Features hopes to recreate its Christmas 2024 magic, when it unleashed Robert Eggers’ Nosferatu into theaters with a $21 million debut en route to a $95 million domestic run. That’s the high end of expectations for Focus’ Song Sung Blue, a crowd-pleasing title about a Neil Diamond cover band that charmed exhibitors when it screened at CineLATAM in September. A24 will also be rolling out the latest title from director Josh Safdie, Marty Supreme, with Timothée Chalamet starring as an unlikely global ping-pong prodigy.
Year-Over-Year Comps
Week 51 2024 | Cumulative Gross
$142.1M
Week 51 2024 | Top Three
Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (Paramount)
- $37M | Week 2 | 3,769 Screens
Mufasa: The Lion King (Disney)
- $36.8M | Week 2 | 4,100 Screens
Nosferatu (Universal)
- $21.6M | Week 1 | 2,992 Screens
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