Let’s all say a silent prayer for the parents who will undoubtedly spend the next year or so shielding themselves from a new set of earworms courtesy of Elsa, Anna, and company. Judging by this weekend’s box office numbers, that’ll probably be quite a few people, as Frozen II completely iced out the competition with a $127 million domestic haul in its opening week. Globally, the long-awaited Disney sequel earned a whopping $350.2 million—yep, over a third of a billion dollars. Per Deadline, this means Frozen II had the largest global debut of any animated film, ever. Its performance across 37 international markets also marked the highest offshore debut in history, dethroning Ice Age: Dawn Of The Dinosaurs. We imagine next weekend’s Thanksgiving bump will be pretty significant despite the usual second week decline, so the wait until its inevitable billion-dollar break (you know, if you’re waiting for that sort of thing) should be mercifully short.
The gap between Frozen II and everything else is almost comical, and it we wouldn’t blame anyone if they forgot that there were two other major studio premieres this weekend. Just behind Ford V Ferrari, which slipped to second place with $16 million, lies the story of one of the kindest, most beloved public figures in in pop culture portrayed by widely reviled nightmare, Tom Hanks. Sony Pictures’ A Beautiful Day In The Neighborhood opened this weekend with a pretty modest $13.5 million, which may sound pretty low for a premise that garnered so much positive attention from both critics and the general public. As IndieWire noted, this could be chalked up to a somewhat flooded market, with the Fred Rogers documentary Won’t You Be My Neighbor filling a cardigan-shaped void just last year. We’ll see if this slows down any award season chatter, but there’s still a great chance that Hanks will still come out of this with a handful of nominations.
Midway ($4.7 million) slipped to fifth place in order to make room for the Chadwick Boseman starrer 21 Bridges, which grossed a disappointing $9.3 million. With the addition of a mere $2.7 million dollars internationally, that brings the global total to $12 million. It still has a bit of a trek if it wants to make back its $33 million budget.
This Thanksgiving weekend is a big one for indie darlings. Knives Out and Queen & Slim head to theaters this Wednesday, and both have already amassed sterling reviews. We’ll see how they fare against the frosty blast of Disney’s enduring box office monopoly. For a more detailed analysis of this weekend’s box office, check out Box Office Mojo.