Two Disney originals flopped on Thanksgiving, and Hexed is tracking to be the third

The first Thanksgiving tracking landed this week, and Deadline's report gives Hexed a $40–50 million five-day start from November 25 — the same range as its live-action neighbor, Universal's Ariana Grande comedy Focker-In-Law. On paper that's respectable; it even paces ahead of Encanto's $40.5 million. The catch is everything around the number.

Encanto is the wrong comp to be proud of: it opened to that figure in 2021, topped out under $100 million domestic, and only became a phenomenon on Disney+. A Walt Disney Animation original carries a budget that needs a theatrical hit, not a streaming afterlife. And the slot Hexed is walking into has a recent, well-documented body count.

The Wish configuration

In November 2023, Disney released Wish — an original, heavily marketed, anniversary-branded — into the second weekend of The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes. Wish limped to a $31.7 million five-day start, finished under $255 million worldwide against a roughly $200 million budget, and became the second write-down in what is now a pattern: Strange World in 2022, Wish in 2023, two originals, two Thanksgiving flops.

Hexed gets the identical configuration with a stronger predator. Sunrise on the Reaping opens November 20 with presales that trackers have compared to Wicked's and projections topping $100 million — more than double what Ballad ever managed. Deadline expects the Hunger Games film to beat both newcomers across the five-day stretch. Disney has rebuilt the exact chessboard on which Wish lost, except this time the opponent is twice the size.

Wish opened into a Hunger Games prequel's second weekend and died. Hexed opens into a Hunger Games prequel's second weekend.

How low the bar has sunk

The strangest part is the mood around these numbers. On r/boxoffice, the forecast was greeted as good news:

"Disney would be popping champagne if hexed can get $50 million opening animation has been doing terrible as of late"

The commenter isn't wrong about the context — Elio bombed, the last original animated film to clear $500 million worldwide is still Coco from 2017 — but listen to what the sentence concedes. Champagne for a number Encanto already hit, in a market where Moana 2 opened to $225 million over the same holiday. Sequels get recordbooks; originals get a participation trophy at $50 million.

Don't miss: I was rooting for Hexed to break Disney's Thanksgiving curse. The tracking says it won't

Hexed does have real assets: first-choice interest among women is the strongest in its comp set, Hailee Steinfeld is working the soundtrack angle, and Jodie Foster voices her first Disney animated villain. If the film breaks the pattern, those will be the reasons. But directing talent isn't a hedge here — one of Hexed's directors, Fawn Veerasunthorn, co-directed Wish itself, so she has already stood in this exact spot, on this exact weekend, holding an original against a Hunger Games movie. A third loss and the question stops being about any single film: it becomes whether Disney ever puts an original in this slot again.

Previously we wrote: The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping ending explained — how Haymitch's story leads to Katniss's father and her mockingjay pin