Disney's "Frozen II" catapulted to the top of the weekend box office with a $127 million opening-weekend haul in the United States.
Internationally, the film sold $223 million in tickets, bringing its global total to $350 million for its first three days in theaters.
The movie's haul was in line with analyst expectations, which called for $100 million to $140 million. It had the third-highest animated feature opening of all time, behind "Incredibles 2" and "Finding Dory," and outperformed the $93 million opening haul for the first "Frozen," which it made over the course of five days during the 2013 Thanksgiving weekend.
Disney does not consider its recent "The Lion King" film to be an animated feature. It is classified as live action, although all but one shot from the film was rendered digitally.
"Riding the wave of a spectacular year in movie theaters, Disney does it again with the bigger-than-expected debut of 'Frozen II' that sets the stage for a much-needed strong holiday season and for the film to become the sixth Disney film to cross $1 billion globally this year," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore.
"Frozen II" picks up not long after the end of "Frozen," with Anna, Elsa, Kristoff, Olaf and Sven leaving Arendelle to travel to an ancient forest in a far-off enchanted land. Their quest is to find the origin of Elsa's frosty powers and save their kingdom.
It's expected that "Frozen II" will continue to gain momentum during Thanksgiving holiday week.
"Frozen II" was always going to be a big draw for audiences, but having it appear in theaters ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday weekend means the film could have a strong opening weekend and entice families to see the film again during the next week.
It's also likely that some families did not venture out to see the film in its first weekend and opted to see it during the holiday weekend. Analysts foresee a smaller drop in second week ticket sales because of this.
