Disney sent the box office stampeding into the holiday season. Zootopia 2 delivered a colossal $96 million domestic debut and $156 million over the full Thanksgiving frame, but the real headline is its global haul of $556 million.
That makes it the biggest international opening for an animated film ever, the fourth-largest global debut of all time, and the strongest international opener of 2025. Coming nearly a decade after the original, Disney returned to the animal metropolis with the familiar pairing of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde — and audiences showed up in force, far outpacing the first film’s $75 million domestic opening in 2016.
The Thanksgiving box office got an added lift from Wicked: For Good, which continued to soar in its second weekend. Universal’s finale chapter added $62.8 million domestically. Together, the two sequels turned a typically reliable holiday corridor into the strongest showing theaters have seen all year.
For studios looking to steady a shaky box office, the weekend offered a welcome lesson: audiences still turn out for big-world, big-brand storytelling when it’s well-executed.
