It shouldn’t come as a surprise that Finding Dory opened at number one at the box office this week and did enormous business, but the folks at Disney and Pixar must be breathing a sigh of relief. After all, last year’s The Good Dinosaur was the first film to come out of the venerable animation studio that could be considered a legitimate box office disappointment, especially since it came in the wake of the massively successful Inside Out. The massive opening weekend for the sequel to Finding Nemo repositions Pixar in its rightful place on the top of the animated movie food chain.

FilmWeekendPer Screen
1Finding Dory$136,183,000$31,634$136,183,000
2Central Intelligence$34,500,000$9,835$34,500,000
3The Conjuring 2$15,555,000 (-61.5)$4,635$71,730,000
4Now You See Me 2$9,650,000 (-56.9)$2,986$41,362,000
5Warcraft$6,520,000 (-73.0)
$1,914$37,711,000
6X-Men: Apocalypse$5,210,000 (-47.5)$1,979$146,057,000
7Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows$5,200,000 (-63.9)$1,685$71,929,000
8Me Before You$4,155,000 (-54.0)$1,571$46,355,000
9Alice Through the Looking Glass$3,615,000 (-36.0)$1,601$69,318,000
10Captain America: Civil War$2,296,000 (-46.8)$1,601$401,277,000

 

Finding Dory opened with $136 million, breaking the nearly decade-old record set by Shrek the Third back in 2007 for biggest opening for an animated film. Naturally, that also makes it the biggest opening yet for a Pixar movie, smashing the $110 opening for Toy Story 3 back in 2010. The big question right now is how strong Finding Dory’s legs (fins?) will grow in the coming weeks, especially since Finding Nemo opened to $70 million back in 2003 before going on to gross $339 million at the domestic box office alone. With an opening weekend that doubled that of the original, Finding Dory proved itself to be something that audiences wanted to see. The question now is whether or not they like it as much as the original and whether or not they’ll keep coming back.

While Pixar dominated the headlines this week, Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart put on a strong showing in second place. Central Intelligence opened with a solid $34 million, with audiences for both actors showing up in perfectly acceptable (if predictable) numbers. Although both Johnson and Hart have had their ups and downs, this is about average for them and if audiences like the movie (and they do seem to like it), it should coast its way to $100 million or so. There is nothing earth-shattering about these numbers or this film, but these are two rare actors who can pack theaters with their names and faces alone. They still have that drawing power.

Meanwhile, The Conjuring 2 fell to third place and dropped 61 percent, a fairly standard number for a horror movie. With $15 million in its second weekend, James Wan’s sequel has made $71 million so far and will probably settle somewhere north of $100 million when all is said and done. It probably won’t match the original (which made it to $137 million domestic), but it’ll still be hugely profitable.

In third and fourth place, Now You See Me 2 and Warcraft both stumbled, with the former grossing $9 million for a $41 million total and the latter grossing $6 million for a $37 million total. While Now You See Me 2 is just a failure, Warcraft is an enormous failure and that 73 percent drop proves that domestic audiences have completely rejected the film in every way. The international grosses will ultimately prop it up, but the studios don’t see a large percentage of that cash. The Warcraft movies may be dead in the water, even if China does love this one.

The bottom five was business as usual, with Captain America: Civil War finally crossing $400 million domestic and Alice Through the Looking Glass continuing to stagnate tens of millions of dollars away from what the first film made in its opening weekend. X-Men: Apocalypse won’t even double its opening weekend. Me Before You is the low-key, sleeper hit of the summer. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows won’t reach $100 million, which is an important lesson — if you make a sequel to a bad movie, an audience isn’t guaranteed, even if the sequel is a much better movie.

More From Hot 104.7 - KKLS-FM