Movie Monday: ‘Hunger Games’ Prequel Spoils ‘Wish’

Thanksgiving was supposed to be a Wish come true for Disney.

After struggling all year to hit a real cinematic home run (aside from Avatar: The Way of Water from its 20^th Century subsidiary), the Mouse House thought the animated Wish might just do the trick—with prognosticators expecting it to take in at least $50 million in North America during the long Thanksgiving weekend. Sure, those wouldn’t be exactly Frozen numbers, but it’d be the biggest opening for a Disney animated movie since Coco opened with $72.9 million in 2017.

Sorry, Disney. Instead of being the weekend’s star, Wish fell—to The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. The Hunger Games prequel earned an estimated $42 million during the extended five-day holiday weekend to repeat at No. 1.

The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes has now earned $98.4 million domestically since its release. Add in its overseas total and the film has earned $154.6 million—perhaps enough to satisfy even Coriolanus Snow’s insatiable hunger.

But at least Wish settled into second place, right?

Nope, sorry. You can’t underestimate a megalomaniac European dictator, albeit one more than 200 years past his prime.

Apple TV+’s Napoleon outperformed expectations during its own theatrical invasion, plundering North American theaters for an estimated $32.5 million during the five-day weekend. As you know, that wasn’t enough to conquer the box office. But it did push the historical epic to second place domestically. Napoleon added another $46.3 million worth of overseas pillage to bring its total gross to $78.8 million.

That pushed Wish all the way down to third place with $31.7 million. It added another $17.3 million from overseas markets to push its overall debut haul to $49 mil. Sure, it’s early in the film’s run. But given that Disney spent $200 million making Wish—to say nothing of marketing costs—the film has quite a bit of work left to do.

Trolls Band Together finished fourth with $25.3 million, while Thanksgiving, appropriately enough, wrapped up the holiday’s box office top five with $11.1 million.