For theater owners and studio execs alike, the 2021 box office has been a true test of the film industry’s near-immovable optimism, and Thanksgiving weekend offered a mix of encouraging and sobering returns.
Disney’s animated family film “Encanto” and MGM’s biographical crime drama “House of Gucci” both set new post-shutdown standards for their respective genres, while Sony’s “Ghostbusters: Afterlife” is continuing the hot streak the studio has been on this fall. Despite those successes, there’s still a long way back to normal for the box office as overall numbers are over $100 million short of what was seen on Thanksgiving weekend in the 2010s.