Here’s a box office benchmark you don’t see often, if at all: A major Hollywood star has two No. 1 theatrical release openings in the same calendar month, that accomplishment going to Dwayne Johnson.
For the month of November, Johnson saw a No. 1 opening in the Amazon MGM Studios Red One on Nov. 15 with $32.1M and the star is helping deliver the best Thanksgiving opening of all-time with Disney’s Moana 2 which has the potential to hit $200M over 5-days.
In fact, over the Wednesday-Sunday holiday stretch, moviegoers are getting their double dose of Johnson spending around $218M for both Moana 2 and Red One.
From what we’ve culled, along with our chat with distribution sources, no other star has ever pulled this box office record off. There have been some close call instances where stars have opened two No. 1 films within a month of each other, but not the same calendar month, i.e. Chris Pratt with Super Mario Bros. Movie (April 5, 2023; $146.3M 3-day) and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (May 5, 2023; $118.4M); Chris Hemsworth with Marvel’s The Avengers (May 4, 2012; $207.4M) and Snow White and the Huntsman (June 1, 2012; $56.2M) and Tom Hanks with Toy Story 2 (Nov. 26, 1999; $57.3M 3-day) and Green Mile (ahhh No. 2 on Dec. 10, 1999 with $18M).
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There was a lot of noise back in December 2002 when Leonardo DiCaprio had two movies released within five days of each other: Martin Scorsese’s Gangs of New York from Miramax and Steven Spielberg’s Catch Me If You Can from DreamWorks, respectively debuting on Dec. 20 and Dec. 25. However, that release strategy anomaly did not yield a No. 1 opening for the star.
Johnson saw his media schedule finely tuned over the last few months by Amazon MGM and Disney so that both family titles got an appropriate push. He showed up at the NYC premiere for Red One and the Hawaii and London premieres of Moana 2.
Indeed, it’s a box office triumph that Johnson can yell “chee hoo” about at the Thanksgiving table today.