“Finding Dory” Makes Chum of Its Competition

By Kip Mooney • On • In News, Weekend Box Office Report News, Weekend Box Office Report 0

BOX OFFICE REPORT

June 24-26, 2016

(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 5

Finding Dory $73.2 million
Independence Day: Resurgence  $41.6 million
Central Intelligence $18.3 million
The Shallows $16.7 million
Free State of Jones $7.7 million

It was a tale of two sequels this weekend. Finding Dory posted the biggest second weekend ever for an animated movie. It fell only 45.8 percent, which is an incredible hold for a summer blockbuster. At this rate, it will best Finding Nemo by the Fourth of July. Then, it will just be a matter of time before it surpasses Toy Story 3 as the highest grossing Pixar movie ever.

But it wasn't so lucky for Independence Day: Resurgence. The sequel to the biggest movie of 1996 couldn't even muster what that film did on its opening weekend, even with higher ticket prices, 3-D surcharges and almost double the screens. For a film with more than double the budget, that can only look like a crash and burn.

Central Intelligence held well as it slipped to No. 3, and should probably get past Ride Along 2 to stand as the year's biggest live-action comedy before all is said and done. In its second weekend, it still outperformed The Shallows, which is Blake Lively's best debut as a lead actress. That's a walk on the beach compared to Free State of Jones. The Civil War drama starring Matthew McConaughey opened weakly, taking in only $7.7 million against a $50 million budget. That's not all right, all right, all right.

Outside the top 5:

  • This Weekend's Indie Champ: Yes, it's the farting corpse movie. Swiss Army Man, certainly the weirdest movie to come out of Sundance this year, debuted with a fantastic $38,000 average on only three screens.
  • The Neon Demon, the latest stylish thriller from Nicolas Winding Refn, was dead on arrival. The movie barely cracked $600,000 despite playing on nearly 800 screens.
  • Here's a statistic that makes me laugh: Me Before You, the romantic melodrama that cost only $20 million to make, is going to end up with a higher box-office gross than Warcraft, which cost eight times as much.

Next week:

It's a three-way battle for the July 4th weekend, but only one will actually reign supreme. Steven Spielberg's The BFG will be No. 1, but with a not-so-gigantic $65 million over the four-day weekend. The Purge: Election Year should be able to spin some of our national anxiety over the upcoming election into a solid $20 million opening, which will be more than The Legend of Tarzan can say.

Facebooktwitterredditmail

About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

Leave a Reply