FINAL SUNDAY AM WRITETHRU with chart after Sunday 7:54AM and Saturday AM posts: While mid-week projections for Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet and MGM/New Line’s Creed II have simmered, that doesn’t mean that these movies weren’t hot. With $84.5M, per Disney, Ralph 2 continues to be the second-best Thanksgiving stretch opener after Disney’s own Frozen ($93.5M), and also beats the studio’s Moana ($82M), Toy Story 2 ($80.1M), and Coco ($72.9M).

Creed II, hands downs, is the best live-action debut the autumn holiday has ever seen with $55.8M, pummeling past Disney’s 2007 Enchanted (which had some animation in it, $49M five-day), 2008’s Four Christmases, and 2000’s Unbreakable (both $46M).

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Both films, in addition to great holdovers from Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ($42.9M), Illumination/Universal’s The Grinch ($42M) and 20th Century Fox/New Regency/GK Films’ Bohemian Rhapsody ($19.3M), and Paramount’s Instant Family ($17.4M), drove ticket sales over the Thanksgiving five-day to a record $314M, according to ComScore, beating the previous holiday high in 2013 ($294.2M) and surging ahead of last year’s $270.3M by 16%. The 2018 domestic box office to date at $10.7 billion is raging 7% ahead of 2016, which ended in a U.S./Canada B.O. record of $11.4B.

Ralph Breaks the Internet saw a Saturday that drew $21M, -3% as families flocked to the cinema on their days off. The three-day for Ralph 2 is estimated at $55.7M

In regards to marketing Ralph Breaks the Internet, Disney leaned into the digital and tech activations in a big way. The film itself co-stars a multitude of Internet brands, including Google, YouTube, Amazon – the list goes on.

“With the first film, we had such a great, fresh story and emotional center, and our filmmakers were excited to get back into this world, building the Internet with such attention to detail. The marketing team had innovative ways to build buzz on social with heart and humor, and audiences were ready to go,” said Cathleen Taff, Disney President of Theatrical Distribution, Franchise Management and Business & Audience Insights about this weekend’s win.

Ralph shows up in Fortnite. Disney

In the Fortnite video game, a brand new “emote” dance timed to the film’s opening: Ralph made a cameo in the game’s “Risky Reels” environment and the emote was available globally for a limited time. There were other video game/mobile partnerships with NCM Noovie Arcade, the in-cinema mobile/game. The game was tied to the “pancake milkshake” game in the movie’s trailer, and entailed audiences challenging each other for milkshakes and high scores at 21.1K movie screens in such chains as AMC, Cinemark, and Regal. Also, Walt Disney Animation Studios, ILMxLab, and The Void partnered for the first immersive VR experience for an animated feature tied to the sequel. In the game, users become “Netizens” and embark on a journey in a custom story inspired by the film.

In a first-of-its-kind creative execution on Amazon, Ralph “broke” the website’s home page on Nov. 14 to reveal an exclusive Pre-Black Friday deal driving viewers to a themed landing page, with an additional 66 Disney deals for fans, as well as links to purchase movie tickets. The partnership included Ralph across Amazon’s FireTV, IMDB, and the Kindle Fire.

Disney teamed with Google’s Brand Lab for a mobile experience to “Wreck Urselfie” using CloudVision technology, and created interactive scenarios with Google Home featuring Ralph and Vanellope trapped inside user Google Home devices. On WhatsApp, there was a first experience which allowed fans to interact with Ralph and Vanellope as they journey through the Internet and find themselves in WhatsApp.

Disney

In regards to the advance opening heat on social for Ralph 2, RelishMix exclaims that the animated sequel “is a social media juggernaut, with a combined reach of 856.9M” across Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and YouTube views. Ralph 2 videos have gone viral at an amazing rate of 56:1 versus the average animated feature, which is passed around at a rate of 16:1. RelishMix gives high praise to the studio for “leveraging the Disney Princesses and many other Disney properties – from Iron Man to stormtroopers,” to resonate with moviegoers across social leading up to pic’s opening. “These princesses add an additional 109.9M reach from Facebook alone – and the posts were well-coordinated over the last week, not to mention #NationalPrincessDay last Sunday on Nov. 18,” says the social media monitor. The key image of the princesses to the left was used on each of the Facebook pages of Disney’s Frozen, Little Mermaid, Pocahontas, and more. In fact, it was at D23 2017 when Disney first dropped the hysterical scene where Vanellope meets all the princesses. That clip was followed by a reunion of all the (living) princess voice actors onstage. CinemaCon attendees would also get a glance at the footage.

RelishMix adds, “The social star of Ralph 2 is Gal Gadot, with more than 38M followers, whose casting was a real coup for the campaign earlier in the spring.” Vanellope herself, Sarah Silverman, brings 15.1M followers, along with Imagine Dragons at 24M, who performed the movie’s song “Zero,” which is earning 275-300K views a day.

Can't wait for you all to finally meet Shank tomorrow!! Here we go… 🏁🚩🏁🚩 @wreckitralph pic.twitter.com/uIaoNwBacO — Gal Gadot (@GalGadot) November 20, 2018

Through yesterday, Creed II over-performed on the entire East Coast, South, and South Central, with top cities in play being New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta, Washington DC, Houston, San Francisco and Phoenix.

Talking about the success of Creed II this morning, Jonathan Glickman, President of MGM’s Motion Picture Group, said, “We have to acknowledge that the sequel is based off of a movie that people have a real fondness for, and that’s Creed. We did through the roof in ancillary markets; people loved the movie and wanted to see a future installment. The marketing team and distribution team were extremely spectacular in creating a general campaign that targeted younger audiences, as though it was their franchise, and not their parents’ franchise; the continuation of a hero that they cared about and personified by Michael B. Jordan.”

And the younger audience did come out at 66% under 35. Creed II also rallied in pulling in a diverse audience, comprised of 38% Caucasian, 29% African American, 22% Hispanic and 6% Asian.

As we mentioned back on Thanksgiving, Creed II won an A CinemaScore, the same grade as its predecessor. Updated PostTrak demos showed M25+ leading at 34%, followed by F25+ (30%), M25- (23%) and F25- (14%) with a pretty diverse make-up of The single-largest demo remained the 25-34 bunch at 30%. Off its three-day figure of $29.6M, the first Creed went on to make a 3.7x, with a final domestic of $109.7M. Should Creed 2 emulate that off its three-day of $35.2M, then it’s looking at around $130M.

The biggest disaster here for the weekend is Lionsgate’s near-$100M production of Robin Hood, which, at this point in time, is bound to be wounded with a $14.2M five-day take.

If you’re Disney, Sony or Warner Bros. this weekend, then you’re breathing a sigh of relief. Back in 2014-2015, the town got blazing drunk on the desire to develop another Robin Hood and, at one point, four versions of the classic hero were floating around town, with Disney looking at a Pirates of the Caribbean revisionist take by Brandon Barker (Nottingham & Hood), Sony in love with a pitch from Cory Goodman and Jeremy Lott, and Warner Bros. interested in Aquaman scribe Will Beall’s version. Lionsgate put their production into motion the fastest, scooping up Joby Harold’s script (He was one of the writers on Warners’ King Arthur: Legend of the Sword, and gets an EP credit here) and rival studios backed away, which was a prudent business decision in hindsight for a couple of reasons.

‘Mowgli’ Warner Bros Pictures

First, moviegoers aren’t interested in seeing the same IP from different studios, and the studio that makes it to the screen first is truly the winner, especially if they have the goods. Disney’s live-action take of its classic animated title The Jungle Book with Iron Man director Jon Favreau is a hard combination to beat, and the film soaked up close to $1 billion at the global B.O. The success of that film partially created headaches for Warner Bros.’ live action Jungle Book film Mowgli from director Andy Serkis, which was delayed greatly after being in production from March 2015 to Oct. 2017. Alfonso Cuaron was called in to to rescue the movie, and Warners wisely decided to forgo any negative box office press on the film by jettisoning the movie to Netflix for a streaming release (the pic opens limited on Nov 29 before a Dec. 7 global stream date). Seriously, who would pay to see another live-action, big-budget Jungle Book two years later?

‘King Arthur: Legend of the Sword’ Warner Bros.

Second, rebooting dusty classics is a tricky business, with the uphill creative battle being a tug of war between familiar elements that audiences enjoy about the property, and not completely turning the IP inside out. Recent classic reboots, primed to be event films with exorbitant production costs, failed greatly, i.e. Warners’ Pan ($128.3M WW, $150M production cost) and King Arthur ($148.6M WW, $175M prod. cost). The problem with Lionsgate’s Robin Hood is that it’s too familiar and arriving at cinemas far too soon, eight years after Ridley Scott’s Russell Crowe take. That Universal movie at least kept a 19-year space from Morgan Creek’s Kevin Costner film ($165.4M domestic, $390.5M WW), so that it could at least appeal to mass moviegoers (the movie opened to $36M, grossed $105.2M domestic, $321.7M global).

Lionsgate’s remake was attempting to be ‘not your daddy’s version of Robin Hood’, vying for younger moviegoers with Kingsman star Taron Egerton and the movie’s edgy action hijinks. They didn’t come, with the under-25 bunch making up 32% of the audience, and the 13-17 repping only 8%, per PostTrak. Out of all the wide entries this weekend, Robin Hood had the lowest Rotten Tomatoes score at 11% rotten, with reviewers like Rolling Stone‘s Peter Travers smacking, “Arriving just in time to win a place among the year’s worst films, Robin Hood robs you of two hours,” and New York Times‘ Glenn Kenny saying that the movie “strains to relevant…Jamie Foxx must have lost a bet…The plot is twisty in a perfunctory way, the action predictably explosive, the sought-after exhilaration nonexistent.”

Ridley Scott’s ‘Robin Hood’ Universal

Note that when Universal opened Scott’s Robin Hood, it wasn’t without its headaches. The movie looked too similar to 1996 Best Picture Oscar-winner Braveheart, and cost the studio $200M. The movie tanked in its $36M domestic opening, forcing Uni distribution at the time to bang the defense drum for the pic’s overseas prospects. Lionsgate, aside from drinking the Robin Hood juice in 2014-2015, also made their version for overseas purposes. Industry sources figure that around 60%-65% of the pic’s production cost were covered in foreign sales. Robin Hood marks Lionsgate’s most prolific period bomb in recent memory since 2016’s Gods of Egypt ($140M production cost). However, that film did bank close to 80% of its $150.6M global gross overseas.

Back in November 2016, Lionsgate dated Robin Hood for a March 23 release. Then they moved it to Sept. 21, 2018 (in August 2017), then the Thanksgiving stretch back in May. Lionsgate went with Paul Feig’s noir comedy A Simple Favor back on Sept. 14, and it was a better plan, marketing-wise, to distance both Robin Hood and the Anna Kendrick-Blake Lively movie. However, Robin Hood‘s problem at the box office has more to do with the type of film it is, and less to do with dating. Robin Hood did not score well with audiences, and with Lionsgate needing to make as much money as possible, there was no better time to debut the movie than a holiday period when everyone is out going to the multiplex.

Universal Pictures

Universal/DreamWorks/Participant Media’s Green Book wide weekend opening is still far from where this near-$25M production needs to be in order to be considered a success. Universal is calling the five-day for the Peter Farrelly-directed drama at $7.4M, cume to date at $7.8M. Many continue to harp how Universal went too wide/too fast with this movie, jumping from 25 locations to just over 1,000 for the holiday weekend. Given its obscure title, which star Mahershala Ali literally explains in an ad spot, and the great vibe audiences get after walking out of the theater, Universal needed to protect and shepherd this movie slowly, like Lionsgate did with their original musical La La Land two years ago. Focus originally had Green Book, but Uni loved it, believing they could pull off a Blind Side type of Thanksgiving success (that $29M sleeper bowed to $34.1M in the shadow of The Twilight Saga: New Moon‘s $142.8M opening prior to the holiday and legged out to $255.9M and an Oscar Best Actress win for Sandra Bullock and Best Picture nom as well). However, Blind Side was not only boosted by Bullock’s star power at the time, and some of the best reviews of her career, but the movie also appealed greatly to the faith-based. Green Book doesn’t have this momentum, and unfortunately, winning the top prize at TIFF means nothing to general moviegoers.

What the movie does have is great audience exits with an A+ CinemaScore and four-and-half stars on PostTrak. Females over 25 at 46% led the way followed by men over 25 at 40%. Forty-four percent of the audience is over 45 and as we all know that type of crowd takes it time getting to the theaters. As we wrote before, Golden Globe noms are hopefully some form of a savior in regards to greater business. We understand the next bump in screens for Green Book will be around Dec. 7.

“Anchored by remarkable performances by Mahershala Ali and Viggo Mortensen under Peter Farrelly’s brilliant direction, Green Book is a special film that has connected with critics and audiences alike. We are incredibly proud to release this film with our partners at Participant and DreamWorks,” said Universal’s Domestic Distribution president Jim Orr.

Yorgos Lanthimos

Fox Searchlight’s The Favourite lived up to its name in its NY and LA opening at four theaters (Landmark West LA, Arclight Hollywood, Lincoln Square and Union Square) landing the best theater average of the year with $105K, for a total weekend of $420K. The Yorgos Lanthimos-directed period comedy follows a frail Queen Anne (Olivia Colman) during 18th Century England and the court battle that presides behind the scenes between her close friend Lady Sarah (Rachel Weisz) and her cousin, who enters their circle as a new servant (Emma Stone). Rotten Tomatoes is a huge 95% Certified Fresh. The next expansion for the movie is this coming weekend when Fox Searchlight will add seven more cities while widening in New York and LA for a total of 35-40 theaters.

Studio-reported figures as of Sunday morning:

WEEKEND B.O. FOR NOV. 23-25 thumb rank pic dis scrs(cg) fri sat sun 3day 5-day total wk 1 Ralph Breaks… Dis 4,017 $21.7M $21M $12.9M $55.7M $84.5M $84.5M 1 2 Creed II MGM/NL 3,441 $14.1M $13.6M $7.5M $35.2M $55.8M $55.8M 1 3 Fantastic Beasts 2 WB 4,163 $11.8M $11.4M $6.3M $29.7M (-52%) $42.9M $117.1M 2 4 The Grinch Uni/Ill 3,960 (-181) $11.6M $11.6M $6.9M $30.2M

(-22%) $42M $180.4M 3 5 Bohemian Rhapsody Fox/NR/GK 2,927 (-883) $5.2M $5.5M $3.1M $13.8M

(-14%) $19.3M $152M 4 6 Instant Family Par 3,286 $4.6M $5M $2.9M $12.5M (-14%) $17.4M $35.7M 2 7 Robin Hood LG 2,827 $3.4M $3.5M $2.1M $9.1M $14.2M $14.2M 1 8 Widows Fox/NR 2,803 $3M $3.1M $1.8M $7.9M (-36%) $10.5M $25.5M 2 9 Green Book Uni/DW/Part 1,063 (+1,038) $2M $2.1M $1.2M $5.4M

(+1600%) $7.4M $7.8M 2 10 A Star Is Born WB 1,202 (-808) $1.1M $1.2M $660K $3M (-30%) $4M $191M 8

Black Friday AM Update: The Wednesday before the Thanksgiving repped a record day at the box office according to ComScore with all films making $56M, topping 2013’s Thanksgiving Eve which grossed $48M. Business on Thanksgiving declined due to the holiday by 24% to roughly $42.3M, however, today, Black Friday is one of the more lucrative days at the domestic B.O. and the industry is projecting a 107% boost over yesterday with $87M-plus.

Walt Disney Studios

Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet led all titles on Thanksgiving, natch, with $10.3M, -44% from Wednesday, but the industry re-adjusted their five-day outlook for the Disney sequel to $88.5M, still robust and higher than Coco and Moana, but that would be the second highest Thanksgiving 5-day after Frozen. Better to wait to Saturday as matinees could put this movie over $90M again. The 3-day is looking like $59.6M.

Barry Wetcher

MGM/New Line’s Creed II is still bound for the best live-action pic opening record for the holiday stretch, now estimated between $60.2M-$62M. Thanksgiving delivered $8.9M and today should see a boost of 75% to $15.6M. The previous high for a live action feature over Thanksgiving with the Reese Witherspoon-Vince Vaughn holiday comedy Four Christmases with $46M. Three-day on Creed II is $39.7M. The first movie in 2015 did $29.6M over 3-days, $42.1M over five and legged out to $109.8M.

RelishMix reports on the social media word of mouth, “From the moment early clips alluded to the villain as Ivan Drago and his son, fans have been flipping out about Creed II. And, the film campaign has riffed off of this excitement with ‘who would win clips’ shared by fans, Dolph Lundgren, Sylvester Stallone and Michael B. Jordan’s training clips – and much more. The campaign has also really benefited from the soundtrack, with a diverse list of artists lending their voices to the music – many of which shared the official videos on their YouTube VEVO channels. Creed II even has that bit of dialogue that Fans share and discuss at length, ‘If he dies… he dies.'” Creed II video clips have certainly been going viral at a very high rate of 32:1, well above the 11:1 average for a boxing movie. Social media stars for the pic are Sylvester Stallone with 17M followers, Michael B. Jordan with 10M and Dolph Lundgren with 5.6M.

I 100% believe that ADONIS CREED is WAY too fast, too STRONG , too DETERMINED and would EASILY knock out CLUBBER LANG in 3 Rounds or less !!! ! #creed 2 #thanksgiving https://t.co/5lvnQpgLAc — Sylvester Stallone (@TheSlyStallone) November 3, 2018

The third wide opener of the weekend, Lionsgate’s Robin Hood, has been pummeled all the way down to seventh place with $1.9M yesterday (and an awful $14M start for this near $100M production) by four strong holdovers Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald ($6.37M Thursday, $44M 5-day, $118.1M cume) ,Universal/Illumination’s The Grinch ($4.8M Thanksgiving take, $40.7M 5-day, $179.1M cume), 20th Century Fox/New Regency’s Bohemian Rhapsody ($2.6M Thursday, $18.6M 5-day, $151.2M cume), and Paramount’s Instant Family ($2.6M Thurs, +13% over Wednesday, $17.2M 5-day, $35.5M cume), a holiday comedy which won exhibitors at ShoEast recently.

Says RelishMix about the sour response to Robin Hood on social that they’re not big on the cast, and that there’s “confusion over the spirit of this version. It is challenging when upon opening week, some moviegoers are asking if this is a modern telling of the legend, or if it’s a comedy.” Moviegoers are also “unconvinced by the marketing materials.” Next to the social media universe size of Ralph Breaks the Internet (857M) and Creed II (255M), Robin Hood is minuscule with close to 88M across Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube views. All social media buzz metrics are lagging with a lowly viral video rate of 9:1, 7000 Facebook fans daily (the average for an action-adventure movies is 4.4K) and YouTube views for top clips at 13,8K daily, behind the near 36K average.

Universal’s Green Book, which went wide from 25 big city locations to 1,063, was +15% on Thanksgiving over Wednesday with $1M. Three-day is now $5.1M and 5-day $7.1M, which is still low. We’ll see if that A+ CinemaScore word of mouth catches on more.

Sony’s The Front Runner at 807 saw $96K yesterday, -30% for a very lackluster 3-day of $502K, 5-day of $737K.

Thanksgiving AM writethru after Weds. midday update: Ralph Breaks the Internet came in higher with $18.5M on its opening Wednesday (including Tuesday night’s $3.8M) on its way to a potential Thanksgiving opening 5-day record of $95M. Some even think that the Disney sequel has a shot at $100M. Ralph scored an A- CinemaScore (down from his A on his first film) and four stars on PostTrak, however, you wouldn’t know the audience’s change in opinion looking at the grosses as they decide with their wallets. Ralph‘s Wednesday bests the opening days of Moana ($15.5M, 82M 5-day) and Coco ($13.1M, $79.2M) during Thanksgiving and he’s poised to beat the previous Thanksgiving 5-day record opener Frozen ($93.6M) in addition to those movies. In terms of pure record gross over 5-days for the holiday, that belongs to Lionsgate’s Hunger Games: Catching Fire which made $109.9M during its ‘second weekend’ (the Wednesday-Sunday Thanksgiving span following its prior opening weekend).

.Regal Valencia Wednesday night drew several for Ralph Breaks the Internet. Deadline

Ralph Breaks the Internet drew a 40% general audience, along with 39% kids and 21% parents. Overall Ralph 2 drew 52% females to 48% males with near even split of 51% boys to 49% girls under 12. Moms outnumbered Dads, 58% to 42%. Kids loved the sequel at 91%. Demo spread was 30% each for M25- and F25- with 21% females over 25 and 19% men over 25. Caucasians numbered 50% followed by 22% Hispanic, 12% Asian and 8% African American. Anecdotally, it was clear at the Regal in Valencia, CA that it was all about Ralph 2 last night: The 6:40pm Imax show for Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald was hardly filled with roughly 50 people, while many waited in line to get a seat for Ralph 2.

MGM

MGM/New Line’s Creed II also came in higher with $11.6M today, including Tuesday night’s $3.7M, for a five day of $61M. Pic’s numbers easily make it the best live-action opener over Thanksgiving, beating the $46M Wednesday-Sunday take of New Line’s Reese Witherspoon-Vince Vaughn comedy Four Christmases ($46M).

CinemaScore audiences loved it as much as the first with a solid A. PostTrak crowds gave it four-and-a-half stars and 87% overall positive. Men to female turnout was 60%/40% with men over 25 leading the way (35%), followed by females over 25 (27%) and men under 25 (25%). Diversity was robust and included 38% Caucasians, 27% Hispanic, 24% African African, and 9% Asian. The 25-34 quad was a huge 30%.

Creed II is over-indexing in the west, the South, South Central, and the entire Eastern seaboard and Northeast. Top theaters were in the following order AMC Burbank, AMC Empire 25 NYC, AMC Southlake in Morrow, GA; AMC Orange CA, Santikos in San Antonio, AMC Century City, AMC Del Amo in Torrance, AMC Gulf Pointe in Houston, AMC Garden State and Century Tanfuran in San Bruno, CA.

Universal’s The Grinch notched third with $7M yesterday and a projected 5-day spread of $41M and a cume of $179.4M by Sunday through its third weekend.

Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald took in $6.9M yesterday in 4th place, taking its six day cume to $81M. Pic’s 5-day is estimated $41.2M and a running cume by then of $115.3M.

Lionsgate

Lionsgate’s Robin Hood landed 5th with $3.16M including previews at 2,715 theaters, on track for a $16M-$17M opening from Wednesday to Sunday. The Otto Bathurst-directed movie earned a B CinemaScore which was higher than the score for Ridley Scott’s 2010 Robin Hood which earned a B-, but a $36M three-day opening, yet still lower than the A won by the 1991 Kevin Costner Robin Hood Prince of Thieves. Pic earned three stars and a 75% overall positive on PostTrak, with men over 25 at 38% leading the way, followed by F25+ (31%), F25- (16%) and M25- (15%). A low 43% definite recommend.

20th Century Fox/New Regency/GK Films’ Bohemian Rhapsody grossed a third Wednesday of $2.9M at 3,076 and a Thanksgiving stretch take of $21M, running total of $153.6M by Sunday.

Universal Pictures

Further down, Uni/Participant Media/DreamWorks’ Green Book earned $908K at 1,063 and is looking at $6.2M from Wednesday through Sunday in 9th place. Last weekend, the Peter Farrelly-directed film notched an A+ CinemaScore and PostTrak shows an overall 85% score with four-and-half stars. Pic drew a nearly even male-to-female ratio of 52% to 48% with men over 25 making up 43% of the audience to women over 25 at 39%. The latter loved it the most at 89% with a turnout of 68% Caucasian, 17% African American, 7% Hispanic and 4% Asian. The movie has a 72% definite recommend, which is right up there with there with Creed II. Rivals are very cynical about the movie’s long-term prospects, but Universal is hard pressed to make it through Golden Globe noms, and hopefully into Christmas so that this audience pleaser with an obscure title can battle through.

Netflix

We’re hearing that seats for Roma in its NY/LA limited run are seriously selling out. The 10PM show at the Landmark, which typically is an easier venue to get tickets to at that time versus the 7pm or 8pm show which is always packed, was completely sold out. One observer at the Landmark W 57 tells us, “the film was in one of the big houses last night and you could tell crowds were coming. It looked pretty packed.” Will Netflix report on a gross? We’ll see. Grosses weren’t reported for the theatrical qualifying runs for 22 July nor The Ballad of Buster Scruggs, and rival distributors are unable to see the grosses for Netflix films in PostTrak.

Sony’s Gary Hart failed election bid pic The Front Runner jumped from 22 sites to 807 in its third weekend. Similar to its limited launch, it’s not expected to do well with around $900K for the 5-day, and an estimated $138K yesterday. By Sunday, pic will have made close to $1.1M. Sony is riding high that Hugh Jackman has a chance to be nominated for best actor at the Oscars. They were able to pull that off last year for Denzel Washington in Roman J. Israel, Esq. last year even though that movie failed at the box office with a $11.9M domestic take after semi-platform launch.

Thanksgiving will recess from Wednesday in regards to moviegoing activity for all films, then spike again on Black Friday which is one of the more lucrative times of the year.

Wednesday 7:18 AM Update:Disney’s Ralph Breaks the Internet smashed $3.8M last night in previews that started at 6PM, a figure that beats the Tuesday pre-Thanksgiving nights of Disney’s Coco ($2.3M) and Moana ($2.6M) which both respectively legged out to 5-day openings of $72.9M and $82M. Tracking had Ralph Breaks the Internet in the high $60Ms, but there’s a strong feeling around town that this movie is going to surf past $70M+ quite feasibly. Rotten Tomatoes score is high at 87% certified fresh but top critics are loving it at 90%.

MGM

Never underestimate Adonis Creed. MGM’s Creed II is off to a fantastic start grossing $3.659M last night, a figure that beats Creed‘s $1.4M pre-Thanksgiving Tuesday night by 64%. Creed II‘s cash will be rolled into today’s opening number. New Line co-financed the movie, and Warners has overseas and Canada. The first Creed, distributed by Warner Bros, posted a first day of $6M and a five-day of $42.1M. Creed II, rated PG-13, is looking to punch $55M. This is the fifth time in the Rocky/Creed franchise that one of its pugilist pics has played the Thanksgiving period following the original 1976 Rocky, 1985’s Rocky IV, 1990’s Rocky V and 2015’s Creed. In fact Creed II is a nod to Rocky IV as the son of Apollo Creed comes up against the son of Rocky Balboa’s former Russian foe Ivan Drago.

Even more amazing Creed II‘s preview numbers beat those of MGM’s Quantum of Solace ($2.5M off shows that started at 8PM, not 7PM), and a slew of sequels (even if it’s not an exact demo-to-demo comp) such as Blade Runner 2049 ($3.5M) and Kingsman: The Golden Circle ($3.4M). Creed II is also nickels and dimes from the preview night of Mad Max: Fury Road ($3.7M, $45.5M 3-day, $55.7M Friday-Tuesday).

Creed II finished strongly on the West Coast last night with solid numbers across the nation in such cities as New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Philadelphia, Washington D.C., Atlanta, Detroit, Houston, Miami, Orlando, Boston, Tampa, Cleveland, Baltimore, and more.

Warner Bros

Last night was also a strong night for Warner Bros.’ Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald which made $7M, +38% over its $5M Monday for a five-day of $74.2M. Grindelwald‘s Tuesday, though great, was -25% from FB1‘s $9.3M Tuesday before Thanksgiving. Currently, Grindelwald is pacing behind FB1 by 18%. The first chapter finaled at $234M stateside.

Lionsgate’s Robin Hood, which cost just under $100M though funded via the distributor’s foreign sales method, earned $800K at 2,100 locations. The pic also held Monday night paid sneaks which grossed $400K, so between the two days the remake counts $1.2M. The movie is booked at 2,715 locations today and will increase to 2,827 locations by Friday. Robin Hood is expected to die with a five-day in the teens.

Netflix

As we reported yesterday, Universal/Participant Media/DreamWorks Green Book is expanding from 25 big city runs to 1,050 venues. Many are expecting the film to file in the high single digits over the next five days. In its limited five-day run, the Peter Farrelly-directed movie is up to an estimated $400K.

In addition to Fox Searchlight’s The Favourite opening at the Landmark West LA, Arclight Hollywood in Los Angeles, and Lincoln Square and Union Square in New York on Friday, Netflix is opening Roma for a qualifying run at the Landmark in LA, and Landmark W. 57th and IFC Center in NYC today.