Thanksgiving at the Movies
When I started celebrating Thanksgiving with my adopted California family, I became part of a long-standing tradition in their family: movies on Thanksgiving Day. The first year we watched several movies over the course of the day. We alternated between dramatic action films, chick flicks and football. Here’s an idea of our viewing that day: Gladiator, Legally Blonde, Braveheart, Chocolate, and the Dallas Cowboys.
The next year, like millions of other Americans, we headed to the theater to see the latest new release movie. Thanksgiving weekend is a bonanza for movie-makers. If they want to, parents can leave their children at a theater all day to be entertained while they shop.
This Thanksgiving season, some great films were released. This week, a whimsical, entertaining film named Enchanted finished atop the box office returns. Featuring Amy Adams and Patrick Dempsey, the movie also includes cameos from the humans behind some of Disney’s favorite animated princesses. Jodi Benson, the voice (singing and spoken) of Ariel (The Little Mermaid), has her first live-action role as Patrick Dempsey’s assistant. Also appearing in cameos are Judy Kuhn (the singing voice of Pocahontas) and Paige O’Hara (the voice of Belle, from Beauty and the Beast).
With an estimated weekend gross of over $50 million on 3,730 screens (as reported by Box Office Mojo), Enchanted had almost twice the box office income as the next highest-grossing film. That’s pretty amazing.
Congratulations to the marketing and distributing planners behind this film. They did their homework and it paid off richly.
