Disney ruled the Thanksgiving holiday box office as Zootopia 2 recorded a record-shattering opening, pulling in a staggering $556.4 million globally over the five-day, Wednesday to Sunday stretch. That includes a whopping $156 million domestically. But that’s not where the good news ends. Further down on the charts, Disney got a bit more good news as Predator: Badlands officially became the biggest Predator movie ever.
On its fourth weekend, director Dan Trachtenberg’s Badlands added another $4.8 million to its ever-growing domestic total. The film also added to its total overseas during the holiday, despite the stiff competition from the likes of Zootopia 2 and Wicked: For Good. With that, the latest entry in the long-running franchise has amassed $85 million in North America to go with $88.7 million internationally for a grand total of $173.7 million worldwide.
With that, it passes the lifetime total of 2004’s crossover Alien vs. Predator ($172.5 million worldwide) to take the crown for the franchise. Now, there is a pretty big caveat here as Badlands is also by far the most expensive movie in the Predator canon to date, boasting a $105 million price tag. So it still has a ways to go before it reaches theatrical profitability, with its run winding down. It should get close to $200 million worldwide before all’s said and done.
The film centers on a young Predator named Dek (Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi) who is cast out from his clan and winds up on a dangerous planet in search of redemption. With the help of a damaged android named Thia (Elle Fanning), the unlikely duo embarks on a perilous quest in search of the ultimate adversary.
Now, the movie won’t profit in theaters but Badlands has been met with stellar reviews. Trachtenberg is three for three in that department after 2022’s Prey and this year’s animated Predator: Killer of Killers. There’s a decent chance that Disney could look at this as a loss leader as they look to invest in both this and the Alien franchise as theatrical concerns. There’s certainly more value in a well-liked movie making $200 million at the box office than there is in dumping a great movie like Prey directly to streaming. That’s one way to look at it.
There's value in this movie beyond theaters, whereas the average blockbuster disappointment doesn’t have much to hang its hat on. This, however, is adding another very good movie to a long-running franchise that Disney is invested in. After putting Prey and Killer of Killers directly on Hulu, this could be viewed as growing pains. Especially if the studio wants a new Alien/Predator crossover movie, which seems to be the endgame here. We’ll see how it all shakes out. For now, there is a new king of in the Predator universe.
Predator: Badlands is in theaters now. For more, find out what James Cameron’s R-rated Jurassic Park would have looked like.
