“Moana” Bests “Fantastic Beasts”

It was a veritable feast for family-friendly fare at the box office this Thanksgiving, and a famine for two more adult-oriented films that we'll get to later. Disney's Moana topped the box office with an estimated $55.5 million. The Pacific Island-themed musical has already racked up more than $81 million since opening late Tuesday. That was more than enough to send Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them down to second place. Still, that Harry Potter spin-off held well, dropping a mere 39 percent. It's already surpassed several of the year's sequels and will pass $200 million in the next 10 days, becoming one of only 10 movies to do that so far this year.

One that already hit that milestone is Doctor Strange, which still brought in audiences even after four weekends in theaters. It beat out Allied, which only took in $13 million for the weekend but $18 million since its first late Tuesday showings. That's not a great return for an expensive flick like this, but it's already surpassed Robert Zemeckis's last film, The Walk, which only managed to make $10 million during its entire run.

Arrival dropped to fifth place, but only by seven measly percentage points. That led it to become director Denis Villeneuve's highest grossing film ever, beating out his U.S. breakthrough Prisoners. All of those did better than Bad Santa 2 or Rules Don't Apply, which will go down as some of the year's biggest flops.

Outside the top 5:

• This Weekend's Indie Champ: Lion, the Weinsteins' tear-jerker about an Indian boy trying to find his biological parents. It averaged $32,092 on four screens.
• Bad Santa 2 couldn't even beat a three-week-old Christmas movie (Almost Christmas). The belated sequel to Billy Bob Thornton's foul-mouthed original only took in $9.1 million since late Tuesday, which was below the $16.8 million the original made in the same 5-day period 13 years ago. Bah humbug, indeed.
• Warren Beatty's big comeback vehicle Rules Don't Apply did even worse, taking in a meager $2.1 million in five days against a $25 million budget. As someone put it on Twitter: "You even watch this movie in a theater by yourself, just like the real Howard Hughes."

Next week:

Expect a repeat of what we saw here, as the first weekend of December is a no-man's land much like Labor Day Weekend. The only new release is the horror flick Incarnate. That means Moana will repeat at No. 1, this time with only about $35 million.