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Posted June 19, 2016 by Seth Paul in News
 
 

Box Office Weekend: Audiences Find Dory Delightful


The box office is big again. In the best weekend since the beginning of May (when Captain America: Civil War was released), Finding Dory took the top spot, and it was by a wide margin: at an estimated $136.2 million, it was the biggest opening for a PG-rated film in history. At an estimated $34.5 million second-place finisher Central Intelligence fell much further behind in gross, but the buddy cop antics of Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart have been doing surprisingly well with critics, though with a $50 million budget to cover, it might have quite a deficit to Finding Dory Posterovercome. In the meantime, The Conjuring 2, despite slipping to third with an estimated $15.6 million, is holding on rather well for a horror film, and with $187.9 million worldwide, is already a superb financial success.

Critics were not kind to the fourth thru sixth-place finishers, but so far, only one has managed to overcome those odds. Now You See Me 2 lags behind the smash-up moneymaking prowess of the original film, with an estimated $9.7 million bringing its two-week domestic total to $41.4 million. Warcraft, too, is buoyed somewhat by its foreign ticket sales, but here, the $160 million epic brought in an estimated $6.5 million and $37.7 million in domestic gross. And despite its poor critical showing, X-Men: Apocalypse has actually done quite well financially; even at an estimated $5.2 million weekend bringing in $146.1 million in the domestic box office, worldwide it is the third highest grossing film of the franchise.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows may want to return to them with its dismal showing…just showing under ­X-Men: Apocalypse with an estimated $5.2 million, it has only made $147.2 million worldwide (a little under half that amount here), falling well short of the milestone of the previous film. Me Before You, in the meantime, has bested its critical panning, an estimated $4.2 million giving the $20 million production $46.4 million here and $82.4 million in total worldwide take.

Finally, Alice Through the Looking Glass appears to be ready to be labeled a box office bomb. An estimated $3.6 million weekend adds to an unimpressive $236 million worldwide take…but it could be a take Disney may be willing to accept, considering the successful opening weekend of Finding Dory along with Captain America: Civil War. Despite landing tenth with an estimated $2.3 million, the $250 million blockbuster yanked in well over $1.1 billion worldwide.

Weekend Box Office (June 17th – June 19th)

  1. Finding Dory…$136.2 million
  2. Central Intelligence…$34.5 million
  3. The Conjuring 2…$15.6 million
  4. Now You See Me 2…$9.7 million
  5. Warcraft…$6.5 million
  6. X-Men: Apocalypse…$5.2 million
  7. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows…$5.2 million
  8. Me Before You…$4.2 million
  9. Alice Through the Looking Glass…$3.6 million
  10. Captain America: Civil War…$2.3 million
Seth Paul

Seth Paul

When not failing to write novels and screenplays, box-office guru Seth writes humorous comedy tracks for films under the name "The One Man Band" that can be found at Rifftrax.com. Although, he has recently succeeded in writing the novella "Jack Alan and the Case of the Not-Exactly Rocket Scientists," available as an eBook on Amazon. He is also the English voice of Zak in "Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space."