If Hollywood needed any further lesson that audiences (generally speaking) want original content over half-baked sequels and remakes, the evidence arrived this weekend in a big way. Either that, or you can never go wrong with talking animals.
Illumination Entertainment and Universal‘s “The Secret Life Of Pets” opened with a staggering $103 million for the sixth-best July debut of all time. The film’s Friday tally of $38.3 million is best ever for an original animated movie, and no doubt about it, this is a huge hit, right when the summer box office needed it. ‘Pets’ knocked “Finding Dory” out of the top spot after three straight weeks, but don’t feel too bad for Disney/Pixar. The movie is now Pixar’s biggest domestic earner ever, and Disney has now hit $5 billion in box office for the year — faster than any studio has reached the figure in history. Basically, they’re swimming in money.
READ MORE: 12 Films To See In July
The summer of R-rated failures continues. After “The Nice Guys” with Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe failed to fill seats, moviegoers shunned the raunchy laugher “Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates,” with the film opening to a pretty underwhelming $16.6 million. As much as Hollywood is really trying to make Zac Efron a leading man, the effort doesn’t seem to be working. This marks his third-straight underperforming picture this year following “Dirty Grandpa” and “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising.” His next big studio project is “Baywatch,” which arrives in multiplexes next summer, but luckily, he’ll be alongside Dwayne Johnson, who can’t seem to make a wrong step these days.
A few times per year, an unexpected foreign film will manage to punch its way into the North American box office, and this weekend it’s the Bollywood flick “Sultan.” The movie managed to pull together $2.2 million to grab the last spot in the top ten, with the movie playing on 283 screens. That’s more than “The Neon Demon” earned in its opening weekend on over 700 screens, just for a point of comparison.
Meanwhile at the arthouse, Viggo Mortensen‘s “Captain Fantastic” scored $98,451 on four screen, for an impressive $24,613 per-screen-average, while Hirokazu Kore-eeda‘s “Our Little Sister” tallied $27,030 on three screens.
1. “The Secret Life Of Pets” — $103 million
2. “The Legend Of Tarzan” — $20.6 million ($81.4 mil.)
3. “Finding Dory” — $20.3 million ($422.5 mil.)
4. “Mike And Dave Need Wedding Dates” — $16.6 million
5. “The Purge: Election Year” — $11.7 million ($58.1 mil.)
6. “Central Intelligence” — $8.1 million ($108.3 mil.)
7. “Independence Day: Resurgence” — $7.7 million ($91.4 mil.)
8. “The BFG” — $7.6 million ($38.7 mil.)
9. “The Shallows” — $4.8 million ($45.8 mil.)
10. “Sultan” — $2.2 million