US box office collection: Moana scores high this Thanksgiving weekend; Allied and Bad Santa 2 record mediocre earnings

Disney's 3D animated movie Moana conquered the North American box office in its five-day long opening weekend with a whopping $81.1 million collection; on the other hand, Brad Pitt's Allied and Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa 2 had an average run at the ticket window.

Moana recorded one of the best Thanksgiving weekend collections at the North American box office. After having a record $15.7 million opening, the film minted $81.1 million from 3,875 theatres over the weekend. However, Moana failed to beat the five-day Thanksgiving weekend record of Frozen.

Moana's five-day total falls short of $13 million to beat the record of Frozen. The animated film, which tells the story of two sisters Anna and Elsa, earned $93.3 million from the five-day run in 2013. Nevertheless, with Moana's Thanksgiving weekend total, Disney has taken the top six positions in the Thanksgiving debuts.

John Musker and Ron Clements' directorial animated film raked in $55.5 million from Friday to Sunday at the US-Canada box office, according to the studio estimates.

"If you look at the track record of this year, there's definitely a correlation to the films that have broken out and become hits," Dave Hollis, head of domestic distribution at Disney, was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

"Each of [Disney's top performers] had Rotten Tomatoes scores in the 90% range, each of them had CinemaScores that were As. If you make something that has a great story and huge scale and is ultimately living under the brand, the chances of having success are overwhelmingly higher," he added.

After Moana, the Harry Potter spin-off Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them scored the second best collection over the five-day weekend. The film, starring Eddie Redmayne, earned $65.8 million, which took its box office collection to $156.2 million at the North American market.

Surprisingly, Pitt-starrer Allied performed way below expectations. The first-weekend box office collection of Allied stands at $18 million, which is lower than Fantastic Beasts' second-weekend collection. Bad Santa 2 and Rules Don't Apply also recorded a low weekend at the collection centres.

Bad Santa 2 raked in just $9 million over five days, while Rules Don't Apply earned just $2.2 million.