• by Wayne Friedman , Staff Writer, 2 hours ago

Soaring box-office results for the Thanksgiving holiday weekend for movie-studio business should be something to cheer about. At least from a financial investor perspective.

At first blush, there has been some positive news: in early Monday morning stock-market trading of Walt Disney shares, the stock was up 1.6% to $105.20 on some heavy volume, with 6.3 million shares traded.

This was after “Zootopia 2” posted record-setting results for an animated movie with its massive $156 million five-day opening.

But at the same time, looking at the health of the overall business, two major U.S. theater chains went south. The largest U.S. company -- AMC Entertainment Holdings -- was down 3% in early Monday morning trading to $2.38.

Another major chain -- Cinemark Holdings -- declined 3.6% to $26.40, while big-screen theater owner Imax Corp. dipped 1.3% to $36.60.

Season-to-date, box-office revenues in the U.S. and Canada are now up -- albeit by a small 1.2% to $7.57 billion, according to IMDd’s Box Office Mojo. This is in contrast to the better part of the year, when revenues were down by mid-single-digit percentages. Overall international results also soared this past weekend.

There could be other reasons for the different directions taken for big movie studio-based big media companies and theatrical movie-house chains.

While virtually all legacy media companies have been struggling off and on -- including Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, and Paramount Skydance, to name a few -- they continue to have hope that their highly scrutinized streaming and constant revamping of digital-centric businesses will win the day in the long term.

It is much more difficult to give major theatrical movies the same prognosis -- what with streaming business still rising, and studios being even more selective of the expensive films projects they pursue.

But one would have thought some strong business news off an all-important holiday weekend would have given some declining movie theater stock trends a break.

Investors may see that the last chapter of this story may be as predictable as some real-life animal dramas in a zoo.