A cat, a kaiju and a Quarter Quell: November at the box office

November is when the year picks back up after the slow comedown September and October usually bring. Last year it was Wicked: For Good and Zootopia 2; the year before, Wicked, Gladiator II and Moana 2 inside one eleven-day stretch. This year there is nothing on the calendar at that size — and that is the story of November 2026 at the box office.

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping is the biggest film of the month, and it is tracking for an opening in the $60–70 million range. That makes November the first month since April likely to finish down on last year, and probably by a fair bit. Last November’s four frames did $766 million, with Wicked: For Good’s $147 million opening doing a lot of the heavy lifting. There is no $147 million opening coming this year, so the real question is how far down the month lands, and whether the four mid-sized openers — The Cat in the Hat, Godzilla Minus Zero, Ebenezer and the Fockers — can stack up enough to keep it respectable.

If at least three of those four can overperform, and if Sunrise on the Reaping can at the very least match the previous film’s $166 million domestic total, then November can still save some face, even if it is still down from previous years. Of the five films, Ebenezer looks least likely to be a hit, with buzz described as decidedly negative. November, in short, is a $1 billion month when it has a Frozen or a Wicked, and a $540–620 million month when it doesn’t. This year looks like the second kind.

Weekend one: a cat, a kaiju and a possible record

The first weekend of November, November 6–8, brought two very different openers. The Cat in the Hat, Warner Bros.’ animated Seuss feature with Bill Hader voicing the Cat — the first animated Seuss feature since The Grinch — was tracking at $35–45 million according to Boxoffice Pro, with a predicted opening of $30–40 million and a predicted total of $110–150 million. Godzilla Minus Zero, Takashi Yamazaki’s return to the franchise and the first Japanese production shot for IMAX, arrived with a 95 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, a predicted opening of $25–35 million and a predicted total of $70–110 million.

Sony also released Ramayana, the Ranbir Kapoor and Yash epic, in the US on Thursday, November 5, two days before it opened in India — a reminder that the November box office is no longer a purely Hollywood affair, and that major Indian cinema now opens on a global schedule.

What October handed over was thinner. Clayface was tracking at $25–30 million and was the only October release still doing real business through the first half of November. Street Fighter opened to $31.0 million. The month’s fortunes, then, rest heavily on the November openers themselves.

Weekend two: the Quarter Quell arrives

The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping opens on November 13, and it is the biggest opening of the month by a distance. Joseph Zada stars as a young Haymitch, and the film arrives in IMAX with a predicted opening of $50–70 million and a predicted total of $175–250 million. Two hundred million dollars domestic is in play, and if the film reaches it, it will have done more than any other November release to hold the month together.

The same weekend brings a heist film and the return of a familiar star, but the conversation will be about the Hunger Games. The franchise has been one of the most reliable box-office performers of the past fifteen years, and Sunrise on the Reaping is its first outing in several years. Whether it can match the previous film’s $166 million domestic total is the number to watch.

The year in context

For all November’s softness, 2026 as a whole is running well ahead of last year. The year is already at $7.9 billion and running 20 percent ahead of 2025, and December has Avengers: Doomsday and Dune: Part Three opening on the same day. A down November, in other words, is a pause in a strong year, not a sign of trouble for the industry as a whole.

That context matters for the cinemas, too. A month with four mid-sized openers and one tentpole is a different kind of month from one with a single giant: it spreads the audience across more films, gives smaller titles room to find their audience, and rewards the films that overperform their tracking. The Cat in the Hat and Godzilla Minus Zero could hardly be more different — a family animation and a Japanese kaiju epic — and both have a real chance to beat expectations.

Beyond the box office

The entertainment week was not only about cinemas. The Strokes made their fifth appearance on Saturday Night Live on November 7, performing two tracks from their seventh studio album — with Walton Goggins joining the New York band on bongos. Mark Hoppus, the Blink-182 bassist, made a surprise appearance at the Hollywood Bowl on November 7, joining Jimmy Eat World on stage for a performance of “A Praise Chorus”. And Macklemore said on November 6 that nine major American arenas had refused to host his “Free Palestine” benefit tour, accusing venue owners of silencing his support for Palestinians after initially offering available dates.

November 2026, then, is a month of mid-sized bets and one big one — and the box office will tell us, weekend by weekend, whether those bets paid off.