A record-breaking Thanksgiving frame is lifting all boats, tentpoles the most evident, with boom, boom, boom for Moana 2, Wicked and Gladiator II. Some 30 million moviegoers went to see one of these. In the weird post-Covid shift, tentpoles can slay, and indies can disappear. This weekend, however, they didn’t. Audiences showed decent specialty support
Heavier Trip
Catching up to three big name festival films that opened Wednesday at the specialty box office to start the extended U.S. Thanksgiving holiday weekend – Luca Guadagnino’s Queer from A24 starring 007 Daniel Craig; Angelina Jolie as Maria Callas in Pablo Larraín’s Maria from Netflix, both of which premiered at Venice; and Iranian filmmaker Mohammad