“Cars 3” Zooms into First Place

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

BOX OFFICE REPORT

June 16-18, 2017

(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

 

TOP 5

Cars 3 $53.5 million
Wonder Woman  $40.7 million
All Eyez on Me $27.0 million
The Mummy $13.9 million
47 Meters Down  $11.5 million

 

Pixar's latest sequel had no problem taking the top spot at the box office. The third entry in the Cars franchise opened lower than the first two films (11 years and six years ago, respectively) but got more favorable reviews. What may be startling for Pixar is that the $53.5 million isn't that much higher than any other animated opening this year. This one won't be the juggernaut that Inside Out or Finding Dory was.

Wonder Woman held impressively, dropping only 30.3 percent in its third weekend. That puts it at nearly $275 million so far, so it may end up as the second biggest film in the DC Universe, and maybe even the first. It would likely end right behind Batman v Superman in terms of dollars earned, but by far the top film in terms of public and critical opinion.

The Tupac Shakur biopic All Eyez on Me debuted rather impressively for a music drama. Its $27 million bow is higher than 2009's Biggie biopic Notorious, but not in the same league as the N.W.A. flick Straight Outta Compton, which earned more than $60 million when it premiered two summers ago. That was way more than Tom Cruise's Mummy reboot, which dropped all the way to fourth place, just a hair above the shark thriller 47 Meters Down. That Mandy Moore drama took in $11.5 million, which wasn't as big as last summer's The Shallows, but better than 2011's instantly forgotten Shark Night.

Outside the top 5:

  • This Weekend's Indie Champ: Hare Krishna!, a documentary on the founder of the religion. It took in $21,473 on its lone screen.
  • Rough Night had a rough weekend at the box office. The R-rated comedy featured an all-star comic cast, but only took in $8 million, good for 7th place.
  • The Book of Henry might go down as one of the most reviled movies of the year, but the drama from the director of Jurassic World, will also be one of the lowest-grossing wide releases of the year. A $1.4 million opening means it may not even pass the gross of his first movie: Safety Not Guaranteed, which played on far fewer screens but still managed to earn $4 million.

Next weekend: Everyone gets out of the way for Transformers: The Last Knight, which opens on Wednesday. It will of course be No. 1, but I expect following the trend of most long-running franchises. I'll guess $70 million for the weekend and $85 million for the five-day.

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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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