The Secret Life of Pets is the sixth film of 2016 to open over $100 million, which matches the total number of such films in 2015, and it appears unlikely that none of the remaining 2016 releases will top the $100 million mark, which bodes well for 2016 box office prospects. So far the overall box office total in 2016 is running about 2.9% above last year’s total.
The Secret Life of Pets set a new record for a 3-day opening by an original animated film, easily topping the mark set by Pixar’s Inside Out last year ($90.4 million). Families made up 54% of the opening weekend audience for Pets, though, not surprisingly given its subject matter, the film also appealed to adults without kids (but presumably with pets), who made up a solid 25% of the audience. Given the movie’s solid “A-“ Cinemascore, this animated saga, which also sports a 76% positive rating with the critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, should hang around in theaters for quite a while—and given the film’s modest $75 million production budget, Pets will be a major moneymaker for Illumination and Universal.
Perhaps most importantly, given the enormous success of Disney’s Zootopia (over $1 billion worldwide), Pixar’s Finding Dory (see below), and now The Secret Life of Pets, you can bet the farm that there will a host of animated feature films about animals hitting screens over the next few years.
While the profitability of Warner Bros.’ Legend of Tarzan remains in doubt because of the film’s enormous $180 million cost and its weak (for such an expensive film) $38.5 million opening, the movie enjoyed a solid hold, dropping just 46% as it earned an estimated $20.6 million for an $81.4 million domestic total so far. This film’s final fate rest with a number of big overseas openings including China (on July 19), though early results from overseas have not been great, a huge showing in the Middle Kingdom would certainly help.
Pixar’s Finding Dory may end up in second place when final numbers are due on Monday. Preliminary estimates have the Pixar sequel at $20.3 million for the weekend, a 51.3% decline that is clearly attributable to the mega debut of The Secret Life of Pets. But Dory’s domestic cumulative is now a sterling $422.6 million, well ahead of Captain America: Civil War, which currently stands at $406.2 million. In spite of a few flops like Alice Through the Looking Glass and The BFG, Disney, which has the top two releases of 2016 so far in the domestic market, has earned nearly $2 billion here in North America and more than $5 billion worldwide—and the year is barely half over.
|
Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July 8-10, 2016 |
||||||
|
Film |
Weekend Gross |
Screens |
Avg./Screen |
Total Gross |
Wk# |
|
|
1 |
The Secret Life of Pets |
$103,170,000 |
4,370 |
$23,609 |
$103,170,000 |
1 |
|
2 |
The Legend of Tarzan |
$20,615,000 |
3,591 |
$5,741 |
$81,412,712 |
2 |
|
3 |
Finding Dory |
$20,351,000 |
3,871 |
$5,257 |
$422,580,243 |
4 |
|
4 |
Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates |
$16,600,000 |
2,982 |
$5,567 |
$16,600,000 |
1 |
|
5 |
The Purge: Election Year |
$11,700,000 |
2,821 |
$4,147 |
$58,110,275 |
2 |
|
6 |
Central Intelligence |
$8,125,000 |
2,841 |
$2,860 |
$108,325,338 |
4 |
|
7 |
Independence Day: Resurgence |
$7,700,000 |
3,061 |
$2,516 |
$91,495,582 |
3 |
|
8 |
The BFG |
$7,604,000 |
3,392 |
$2,242 |
$38,738,762 |
2 |
|
9 |
The Shallows |
$4,800,000 |
2,406 |
$1,995 |
$45,825,279 |
3 |
|
10 |
Sultan |
$2,216,475 |
283 |
$7,832 |
$3,228,560 |
1 |
Fourth place will definitely go to the R-rated comedy Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, which finished well above expectations with a solid $16.6 million debut. With enough raunch to lure male viewers (48%), Mike and Dave demonstrated a strong appeal to younger viewers with 50% of the opening weekend audience under 25. A mediocre “B” CinemaScore doesn’t bode all that well for Mike and Dave’s future prospects, and the film will receive direct competition next weekend with the debut of the Ghostbusters reboot.
The Purge: Election Year dropped 62.5% in its sophomore frame, but the folks at Blumhouse aren’t wringing their hands since the $10 million production has already earned $58.1 million domestically.
The action comedy Central Intelligence, which stars Kevin Hart and The Rock, earned $8 million in its fourth weekend in theaters, bringing its domestic total to $108.3 million. With about $50 million in foreign earnings so far, this comedy is already a modest hit for Warner Bros., which needs all the hits it can get this summer.
Fox’s Independence Day: Resurgence earned $7.7 million to bring its domestic total to $91.5 million. It should eventually top $100 million here, but it is nearly played out overseas (where it opened earlier) and will end up with a worldwide total of around $325 million, about $175 million less than it would need to break even due to its enormous cost ($165 million).
Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, which was produced by Disney, is also in big trouble after dropping 59.5% from its dismal opening last week. So far in ten days The BFG, which cost $140 million to produce, has earned $38.2 million. Foreign markets will be key in avoiding massive amounts of red ink, but the film is rolling out slowly, so its fate will not be known for quite some time.
Mention should be made of Jaume Collet-Serra’s The Shallows, a modestly budgeted horror thriller that stars Blake Lively, and which has earned $46 million domestically versus its cost of just $17 million. Its success along with those of The Purge: Election Year and The Conjuring 2 will likely insure that in coming years we will have the occasional horror film to leaven our summer diet of blockbusters and comedies.
Tenth place went to a film that was in just 283 theaters, Yash Raj’s Sultan, the highest-grossing Bollywood film of 2016 so far, which obviously did well with the growing Indian-American community.
Be sure to check back here next week to see how Paul Feig’s controversial remake of Ghostbusters with female protagonists fares in this highly competitive summer movie season.
