“The Legend of Tarzan” Swings into Second Place

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

BOX OFFICE REPORT

July 1-4, 2016

(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 5

Finding Dory $50.1 million
The Legend of Tarzan  $45.5 million
The Purge: Election Year  $34.7 million
The BFG $22.2 million
Independence Day: Resurgence  $20.2 million

Last week, I was sort of right in my predictions. I just had the movies wrong. Despite being seemingly written off by Warner Brothers, and just assuming that no one cared about Tarzan anymore, I figured The Legend of Tarzan would be the summer’s biggest flop (after Warcraft). It still might go down as a loss, but it’s The BFG that left a giant crater in the box office. David Yates’ update of the Edgar Rice Burroughs character came in just behind Finding Dory for the four-day holiday weekend, taking in an estimated $45.5 million. That’s not great for a movie that cost nearly $200 million to make, but still not the unmitigated disaster many analysts were expecting.

But The Purge: Election Year really capitalized on the holiday. The $10 million horror thriller tripled its budget in only four days. It opened slightly higher than 2014’s Anarchy but slightly below the 2013 original. Still, it’s likely to pass both films to become the highest-grossing film in the franchise. Who’d have thunk it?

But the real slaughter happened to The BFG. Steven Spielberg has been one of America’s greatest and often most consistently good filmmakers for some time now. But he usually averages one flop a decade and this appears to be his whiff for the 21st Century. Despite costing $140 million and having the Disney machine to promote it, the film only managed $22.2 million over four days. That’s a giant-sized disaster. Speaking of giant-sized disasters? Independence Day: Resurgence got no boost from the titular holiday, losing 50 percent from its already weak opening.

Outside the top 5:

  • This Weekend's Indie Champ: Life, Animated, a heartwarming documentary about a boy who couldn’t speak, but found a way to communicate through animation. It averaged $11,169 on three screens.
  • Believe it or not: With nearly $100 million in the bank, Central Intelligence is the highest-grossing live-action movie of 2016 that’s not based on a previously existing property.
  • Swiss Army Man’s farting corpse isn’t quite a phenomenon yet, but it did jump up to 11th place thanks to an aggressive expansion from distributor A24. Word-of-mouth will be tough to gauge, since people will either love it or hate it.

Next week:

I really won’t be surprised if Finding Dory cedes its spot to another animated movie. So I’m predicting The Secret Life of Pets takes the top spot with $55 million. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates could be a hit on par with the original Neighbors, but I think we’re looking more like How to Be Single, with only $15 million for its first weekend.

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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.

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