In this Weekend Box Office report, Disney/Pixar’s ‘Finding Dory’ drowned the competition, taking in $136.2M to become the highest ever domestic opening for an animated film and the #18 best opening overall. $5M came from IMAX theaters, which normally aren’t a major factor with family movies.
Dave Hollis, Disney’s domestic distribution chief, said:
“In a funny way, the 13-year separation between the first and second movie was serendipitous. It’s part of what created a want-to-see, need-to-see movement. And it’s the 17th consecutive Pixar film to receive some variation of an A CinemaScore.”
‘Dory’ took in $55.2M on Friday, making it the largest single day ever for an animated movie and took in $9.2M on Thursday previews, another record for an animated movie. (Last year’s ‘Minions’ previously held the record.)
‘Central Intelligence’ starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart took in a respectable $34.5M for a second place showing. Holdovers from last week round out the Top Five:
- Finding Dory (Disney) – $136.2M
- Central Intelligence (Warner Brothers) – $34.5M
- The Conjuring 2 (Warner Brothers) – $15.6M
- Now You See Me 2 (Lionsgate) – $9.7M
- Warcraft (Universal) – $6.5M
‘The Conjuring 2’ dropped a pretty whopping 61% from last week, but that’s normal for a horror movie and the film has already made back its tiny budget and is also doing very well overseas, so everything is pure profit at this point.
‘Now You See Me 2’ dropped 57%, which isn’t great but the first movie did big business on home video and we may see a similar second act with the sequel. Lionsgate already had a third movie planned, but that may be in danger now.
‘Warcraft‘ is essentially a flop in the U.S. but has done fantastically in China, where it’s already made $205M.
‘X-Men: Apocalypse’ and ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows’ have fallen out of the Top Five and don’t appear to be living up to their predecessors. Another ‘TMNT’ looks unlikely, but Fox will surely continue their X-Men movies somehow, even if they reboot from scratch, which is looking likelier.
Next week sees ‘Independence Day: Resurgence’ arriving, but will this traditional summer blockbuster be strong enough to take down Disney and ‘Dory’? So far, buzz on ‘ID:R’ isn’t really great, so we’ll see if it can live up to the record-breaking original. Also opening as ‘The Shallows’ and ‘The United States of Jones’. Check back to see how things pan out!
Source: The Hollywood Reporter
