“Keanu”‘s Kitten Can’t Stop the Big Cats of “The Jungle Book”

TOP 5

In the final weekend before the summer onslaught begins, audiences still kept coming back to The Jungle Book. Even three weeks in, the Disney remake still had the bare necessities to blow away the competition. Its estimated $42.4 million is one of the best third weekends ever, up there with all-time winners like The Dark Knight and Spider-Man. It’s held up exceptionally well, though we’ll see how kind the summer is to it. I’m expecting a massive drop next weekend.

The Huntsman: Winter’s War dropped half of its already weak debut. It’s now only made about $34 million, which is still well below what Snow White and the Huntsman did in only three days. It won’t surprise me if it finishes below what that was able to do in one weekend. That’s really, really bad.

In fact, it only barely beat Keanu, the feature film from the minds of the geniuses behind Key and Peele. Even though $9.3 million isn’t great, the movie only cost $15 million, so it will turn a profit – and probably be a big hit on home where, let’s say, people can enhance their viewing experience.

But no movie had a more disappointing weekend than Mother’s Day. The third movie in a series of interconnecting stories from director Garry Marshall, Mother’s Day featured some big names like Julia Roberts and Jennifer Aniston, but only debuted with $8.3 million. That’s worse than 2011's New Year’s Eve and well below the record-setting opening of 2010's Valentine’s Day. Barbershop: The Next Cut closed out the top five.

Outside the top 5:

• This Weekend's Indie Champ: The Family Fang, a dramedy about a dysfunctional family featuring Jason Bateman and Nicole Kidman as messed-up siblings. It took in $15,285 on its lone screen.
• Ratchet & Clank landed with a clunk. The video game adaptation only made $4.8 million in its opening weekend.
• A24 didn’t learn from their mistake with The Rover. After two successful weeks in limited release, they added 440 theaters for Green Room. It added a lot to its gross, but not that much. It’s now made around $1.3 million. That’s more than director Jeremy Saulnier’s Blue Ruin, but it’s still got a ways to go if it hopes to be a crossover hit.

Next week:

Summer movie season officially begins. As always, a Marvel film kicks us off. This time it’s Captain America: Civil War, which feels more like an Avengers movie than the third part of Captain America’s story. As such, I’m expecting an even bigger debut. It’s definitely going to be the biggest of the year thus far, but how big will it be? I don’t want to overstate things, but this has the potential to have the second biggest debut of all time. I don’t think it will quite get there, but just to be safe, let’s say $195 million. That would be $100 million more than The Winter Soldier, which would be the biggest sequel-to-sequel jump ever.