On a weekend when most folks are cleaning their plates, Tangled and Harry Potter cleaned up at the box office.
To no one’s surprise, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 1, topped the box office over the five-day Thanksgiving weekend with an estimated $76 million take. That brings the series’ penultimate chapter to $220 million domestic and $389 million international for an impressive $609 million worldwide total in its first 10 days of release.
What few pundits expected was the strong performance of Tangled, which opened Wednesday and took in $69 million domestic in its first five days — beating expectations by as much as $30 million. Tangled, the 50th feature film from Walt Disney Animation Studios, has earned about $13 million in the few international markets its has opened in.
Third place for the weekend went to another animated feature film, DreamWorks Animation’s Megamind. Four weeks into its run, the movie took in $17 million over the holiday weekend to bring its domestic take to $130 million. The film has taken in $31 million overseas for a total of $161 million.
The holidays’ major release schedule takes a minor breather this weekend, but roars back Dec. 10 with The Chronicles of Narnia: Voyage of the Dawn Treader and The Tourist, with Disney’s Tron: Legacy and Yogi Bear just around the corner on Dec. 17.