Encanto cast its spell at the domestic box office during the Thanksgiving holidays but the big news was the performance of the so-called specialty films which arrive in the theaters around this time of the year.

Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, boasting an A-list cast led by Lady Gaga, Adam Driver, Al Pacino, and Salma Hayek, scored the biggest bow for a drama in the last two years.

The film, based on Sara Gay Forden’s book, The House of Gucci: A Sensational Story of Murder, Madness, Glamour, and Greed, made $21.8 million in the five-day Thanksgiving period and beat the record set by Little Women in 2019.

Paul Thomas Anderson’s Licorice Pizza, starring the late Philip Seymour Hoffman’s son, Cooper Hoffman, and Alana Haim, established the biggest per-screen average in the COVID-19 health crisis era.

Screening in only four theaters in Los Angeles and New York, the film loosely based on teen stories of Gary Goetzman, who was a child actor and became a Hollywood producer, chalked up the best debut screen average with $83,852 per screen. The movie – also featuring Sean Penn and Bradley Cooper as producer Jon Peters – earned a total of $335,000.

Pablo Larrain’s Spencer, with Kristen Stewart as the late Princess Diana, is now the second-biggest earning film of this year that’s released on under 1,300 screens.

The biographical drama focusing on Diana’s last Christmas holidays as she decides to end her marriage to Prince Charles grossed $211,000 which added to the film’s total earnings of $6.64 million so far.

The other specialty releases and their respective five-day holiday weekend earnings were: Kenneth Branagh’s Belfast ($1.3 million), Wes Anderson’s The French Dispatch ($853,000), Mike Mills’ C’mon C’mon ($378,000), Leslie Small’s For the Love of Money ($310,000) and Julie Cohen and Betsy West’s Julia documentary ($95,000).

Back to Encanto, the animated feature about a Colombian girl who is the only member of her family who does not have magical powers topped the North American box office chart. Voiced by a cast including John Leguizamo, Stephanie Beatriz, and Maria Cecilia Botero, the adventure-comedy’s three-day and five-day earnings were $27 million and $40.3 million, respectively.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife dropped to second place but with a still-strong three-day ticket sales of $24.5 million. House of Gucci’s $14.23 million haul in three days landed the crime drama, also top billing Jared Leto, Jeremy Irons, and Jack Huston, in the third spot.

In fourth place was Eternals which drew $7.9 million. Angelina Jolie’s superhero movie has now taken in $150.6 million in the United States and Canada.

Resident Evil: Welcome to Raccoon City’s $5.27 million was the lowest bow recorded in the franchise’s history. This latest installment minus Milla Jovovich ended up fifth in the chart.

Rounding out the top ten were, in order: Clifford the Big Red Dog ($4.875 million), King Richard ($3.3 million), Dune ($2.165 million), No Time to Die ($1.75 million), and Venom: Let There Be Carnage ($1.57 million).

Overseas, Encanto also enchanted and raked in $29.3 million in more than 40 markets, including a solid performance in Colombia, the film’s setting.

Ghostbusters: Afterlife, with a new cast headlined by Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, and Finn Wolfhard but also sees the return of Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd, Sigourney Weaver, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts, stayed strong internationally and grabbed $28 million, resulting in a global tally of $115.75 million.

In China, the war epic The Battle at Lake Changjin is not only this year’s number one money maker globally but is now also the biggest earning movie in the world’s largest film market.

The three-hour epic, directed by Chen Kaige, Tsui Hark, and Dante Lam, and described by critics as a propaganda film, posted more than $890 million in ticket sales. Those figures toppled Wolf War 2 from its top position.