Who will win the Thanksgiving weekend box office?

Thanksgiving weekend tends to be a proving ground for mega-budget studio releases. With Wicked and Gladiator II bringing in impressive returns last week — in two vastly different markets — how will new arrivals like Moana 2 fare? Kim Masters and Matt Belloni break down the projected holiday box office numbers.

“Barbenheimer” or bust? Though the combo of Wicked and Gladiator II may not reach the heights of last summer’s Barbie-Oppenheimer, both films are poised to perform well (very well) in their target demographics. Where Wicked is dominating the U.S. market, Gladiator II is finding success abroad. And both have the potential to benefit from their established fanbases. “These movies will be repeat viewings,” says Masters. “I think especially Wicked is a movie that people will go back to.”

Moana 2: How far will she go? The current record for the biggest Thanksgiving weekend box office opening is held by Frozen, but Moana 2 is projected to beat that record. Bob Iger saved the sequel from its original fate of being released as a Disney+ series and this could prove to be a profitable move. Perhaps it will even be just the thing to give Iger his own, personal “happily ever after” as the company continues its search for a successor. “Moana is almost certainly going to get to a billion, but it's going to play around the world,” says Belloni. “So this has the benefit of being huge everywhere.”

Scriptbot 9000? A big question on the minds of Hollywood writers is whether their work is being used to train AI learning models. According to The Atlantic, that answer (bluntly) is “yes.” However, there’s still a lack of clarity as to the legality of how the data is being used and whether it could be considered copyright infringement. “The speculation is that these studios are playing a longer game here, [negotiating] their own deals, trying to get money out of these AI companies — that's why they haven't moved aggressively on this,” Belloni explains.