No surprise here, as Pixar's Finding Dory continued along its path to becoming the year's highest grossing movie, fighting off challenges from new releases The Legend of Tarzan, The Purge: Election Year, and The BFG to make another 41 million this weekend, bringing its total to 372 million domestically and 538 million worldwide. It's now well on its way to crossing the billion dollar mark, along with The Jungle Book, Civil War and Zootopia, making it another banner year for Disney overall.
In a surprising second place was Tarzan, which got trashed by critics, but far exceeded expectations, coming in with 38 million over the three day frame, but expected to be closer to 50 million once Monday totals are added in. The movie cost around 180 million, so it's not exactly a huge success, but with a Cinemascore grade of "A-," and solid overseas totals, it could be on the way to recouping its budget in the end, which isn't too shabby for a film that was expected to bomb outright for months now. The Purge sequel did far better for its 10 million production budget, bringing in 30 million, and this seems to be a series whose sequels do increasingly better than their predecessors, both critically and at the box office, interestingly enough. Finally, Steven Spielberg's The BFG was a complete flop, earning just 19 million over the weekend against the 150 million budget, showing the limits of the appeal of a Roald Dahl property in this day and age- or maybe the marketing didn't quite know how to sell the creepy looking giant to families. Resurgence rounded out the top five with 16 million.
Top 5:
- Finding Dory- 42 million
- The Legend of Tarzan- 38 million
- The Purge: Election Year- 31 million
- The BFG- 19.6 million
- Independence Day: Resurgence- 16.5 million
In limited release, Swiss Army Man continued to pull in decent numbers, with another 1.4 million as it expanded to over 600 theaters, making it another success for the indie distributor A24, which has been killing it this year with the theatrical releases of The Witch and The Lobster. Next weekend the only new notable movie out is The Secret Life of Pets, which could take some bite out of the Finding Dory audience, but maybe not. We'll have to see. Happy Independence Day, everyone!
