But this year the movie menu is pretty sparse. The North American box office has few new films this weekend that are likely to draw tons of moviegoers.
The slate is a far cry from Thanksgiving weekends of yore. Thanksgiving is usually one of the busiest times of the year for movie theaters, as in many ways it kicks off the profitable holiday box office season — similar to how Memorial Day weekend ushers in the summer. For example, films like “Creed,” “Moana,” and “Knives Out” opened on Thanksgiving weekends and did well.
So what happened to Thanksgiving this year? Once again, blame Covid.
A ‘prime time’ for the movie industry
The dearth of big new releases helps explain why the domestic box office is down 32% so far this year compared to 2019 before the pandemic. The number of releases on 2,000 screens or more is down by 36%.
Holidays like Thanksgiving are important for theaters because “they act as a calendar-based touchstone,” which audiences have come to associate as a “prime time of sorts,” Dergarabedian added.
“This is when the biggest and brightest movies are in the marketplace, and Thanksgiving is certainly one of those timeframes that has developed that type of identity over the years,” he said. “It would be a shame for Thanksgiving to wind up as another marginalized holiday period, like Labor Day weekend.”
As for Thanksgiving, Dergarabedian hopes that as the theater industry normalizes, the holiday will make a comeback.
“This is likely a temporary shift and a result of the challenging marketplace dynamics over the past two and a half years,” he said. “Thanksgiving will rise again as one of the most important moviegoing weeks of the year.”