The Disney Movies That Bombed Over Thanksgiving

With Moana 2 shattering box office records over Thanksgiving 2024, Disney’s dominance over the holiday weekend continues. Since hits films like Three Men and a Baby and Oliver & Company in 1988, Disney has made either Thanksgiving weekend or pre-Thanksgiving weekend a go-to launchpad for major animated and live-action releases. The biggest of these have been Walt Disney Animation Studios and Pixar titles, but live-action hits like Unbreakable and The Muppets have also opened in theaters during the holiday.

Still, not even the Mouse House responsible for redefining how big Thanksgiving new releases can have a bulletproof box office record. Disney has released plenty of box office duds over Thanksgiving weekend, including some costly animated titles that went down in the history books for all the wrong reasons. Let’s look at the Disney movies that bombed over Thanksgiving weekend despite this studio usually coming out on top.

The Rescuers Down Under

Just as the Disney Renaissance was underway with Oliver & Company and The Little Mermaid, The Rescuers Down Under showed up over pre-Thanksgiving weekend 1990 to nearly derail everything. Immediately crushed under the weight of competing family movie Home Alone, The Rescuers Down Under never had a chance to rebound over the longer holiday season. Disney Animation head Jeffrey Katzenberg even pulled all Rescuers Down Under advertising after its disastrous opening weekend. It wouldn’t be long before Disney once gained dominated Turkey Day with Toy Story, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin leaving The Rescuers Down Under as one last box office hiccup before the studio really hit the ground running in the 90s.

Out Cold

Never heard of this gross-out comedy? Neither have most people! This snowboarding comedy (one of many “extreme sports” movies dominating theaters in the early 2000s) hailed from Disney’s adult-skewing Touchstone Pictures division. This label found success with silly yukfests like Wild Hogs and Bringing Down the House in the 2000s. Out Cold, meanwhile, was one of the dumb Touchstone comedies audiences and critics rejected. This feature (which has Zach Galifianakis in a supporting role) failed to clear $15 million worldwide.

[RELATED: Moviegoers Feasted on Nicolas Cage, Superheroes, and SpongeBob at the Thanksgiving Box Office 20 Years Ago]

Treasure Planet

Today, Treasure Planet has a dedicated cult fanbase and receives constant praise for its groundbreaking animation techniques. In November 2002, though, Treasure Planet was a historic flop for Disney. Losing gigantic sums of money for the Mouse House, Treasure Planet failed to clear $110 million worldwide despite costing $140 million to produce. Its failure played a key role in hand-drawn animation’s demise at Disney. Treasure Planet also signaled the end of studios taking risks on costly action-oriented family animation.

Old Dogs

Wild Hogs was the 13th biggest movie of 2007 in North America. After that, Disney was inevitably going to finance anything else director Walt Becker wanted to make. His follow-up project (also starring Hogs leading man John Travolta) was Old Dogs, a critically-savaged family comedy that made less than a third of Wild Hogs domestically. Unsurprisingly, Disney and Becker didn’t immediately collaborate again after this Thanksgiving box office dud.

The Good Dinosaur

With The Good Dinosaur, Pixar Animation Studios returned to Thanksgiving for the first time since Toy Story 2 in 1999. Alas, Arlo and friends did not have the same box office success. Both the first true Pixar bomb and the first title from the studio to make under $360 million worldwide, The Good Dinosaur remains the lowest-grossing pre-2020 Pixar movie in history.

Strange World

Even Treasure Planet proved more lucrative worldwide than 2022’s Strange World. The biggest box office bomb of 2022, Strange World couldn’t reach $74 million worldwide despite costing so much to make and opening over a usually winning time of the year for family-oriented Disney movies. Eventual estimates over how much Strange World would lose for Disney hit as high as $197 million!

Wish

At least Strange World and Treasure Planet bombing over Thanksgiving weekend could be attributed to them being oddball Disney Animation titles. Maybe people just didn’t want action sci-fi movies at this time of the year. Then Wish cratered in 2023, despite being the kind of princess musical folks turned out in droves for over Turkey Day in years past. Meant to be a crowdpleaser ode to Disney’s past, Wish ended up losing the studio $131 million. Unsurprisingly, Disney turned to a reliable franchise like Moana for its next Thanksgiving blockbuster, something that is working out very well.