The Good Dinosaur’s performance was somewhat lackluster at the Thanksgiving weekend box office. It landed second place at $55.5 million for the five-day weekend, behind The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2, which scored $75.8 million.
Although The Good Dinosaur’s performance certainly wasn’t bad, it fell short of the usual expectations held for Pixar fare. Its three-day opening was the lowest of any Pixar movie since the release of Toy Story in 1995. Of course, it must be taken into consideration that the bite taken in the two days of early release could have had something to do with lower performance later in the weekend. As an additional measure of disappointment to the Pixar standard, it was only the second Pixar film to not open at number one.
In the grand scheme of things however, The Good Dinosaur actually performed fairly well. For instance, it was the fourth biggest five-day Thanksgiving opening of all time, making Disney the owner of the top five biggest Thanksgiving openings. In addition, competition from Mockingjay was surely stiff and may have taken some of The Good Dinosaur’s audience.
Critical reception, although lower than usual for Pixar fare, was solid with a 75% score on Rotten Tomatoes. Audience reception was very good, with an A rating on CinemaScore from audience exit polls. Good word of mouth spells good news for The Good Dinosaur’s future at the box office.
Have you seen The Good Dinosaur yet? Does the movie’s box office performance and critical reception reflect the movie’s overall quality?
Edited by: Kelly Conley