Moana, directed by Ron Clements and John Musker, powered its way to a first-place opening weekend of $55.5 million (estimated), and a five-day Thanksgiving period of $81.1 million. It marks the second largest five-day Thanksgiving opening of all-time behind the $93.6m debut of Frozen in 2013.
While marking a solid opening for Walt Disney Animation Studios, the opening significantly lags the three-day opening weekends of the studio’s biggest recent hits—the aforementioned Frozen which took in $67.4m and Zootopia which bowed earlier this year with $75.1m. The three-day was roughly on a par with the $56.2m opening of Big Hero 6 in 2014, though the appeal of Moana should propel the film well past the gross of the Disney actioner.
Another way to look at it: adjusted for inflation, the $80.1m five-day Thanksgiving opening of Pixar’s Toy Story 2 would be $135.7m today. The five-day audience for that film was 15.8 million people, while Moana’s audience drew in around 9.4 million people.