Weekend Estimates: Pets Keep Trophy with $50 Million to Ghostbusters’ $46 Million
July 17, 2016
After a huge amount of speculation on how it would perform at the box office, Ghostbusters is coming in right in the middle of (a very wide range of) expectations. Sony is projecting a $46 million debut for the supernatural comedy, which is far from the disaster many had feared, but some way short of the top tier. It’s also not enough for first place, even though The Secret Life of Pets will be down 52% in its second weekend.
Pets ends the weekend with $203 million after ten days in release. That compares to the $286 million earned by Finding Dory after ten, and a 46% decline for the Pixar film on its second weekend. On current performance, the two films will end up about $100 million apart at the domestic box office in the end, which will more than satisfy both studios. Finding Dory overtakes Shrek 2 today, to become the highest-grossing animated film of all time at the domestic box office. The Secret Life of Pets will end somewhere around the final gross of Zootopia (which has now reached $341.1 million) and Minions (which finished with $336 million).
For Ghostbusters, a $46 million opening weekend compares favorably to the $41 million earned by Independence Day: Resurgence on its first weekend, and is well ahead of the $25.6 million opening earned by Total Recall’s reboot, and the $21.7 million made by the RoboCop reboot. It’s also Melissa McCarthy’s best opening weekend, well ahead of The Heat’s $39 million back in 2013. It’s also worth noting that Pixels managed only $24 million this time last year. All-in-all this is a good performance for Ghostbusters, when compared to other recent attempts to launch or relaunch franchises.
In third place, by a narrow margin over Finding Dory, The Legend of Tarzan is posting another good weekend with $11.12 million and a total of $103.1 million to date. That’s a solid performance after a $38.5 million opening weekend.
This weekend’s other new wide release, The Infiltrator will bring in $5.3 million or so for Broad Green Pictures. That’s the distributor’s second-best opening weekend, behind, A Walk in the Woods, and good word of mouth has helped it post a better opening weekend than looked likely at one point. It still looks as though it will struggle to hold on to theaters for long.
In limited release, Café Society is the stand-out movie this weekend, with a projected $355,000 from just five theaters. That’s the best start for a Woody Allen film since Blue Jasmine picked up $612,064 from six theaters on its opening weekend back in 2013.
Also rumored to be doing well is Hillary’s America, which our sources have earning $75,000 from three locations. We haven’t received an official estimate.
- Ghostbusters Comparisons
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
- The Infiltrator Comparisons
- The Secret Life of Pets comparison chart
- Finding Dory comparison chart
- Highest-grossing animated movies
- Top 2016 movies at the global box office
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Ghostbusters, Finding Dory, The Secret Life of Pets, Independence Day: Resurgence, The Legend of Tarzan, The Infiltrator, Café Society, Hillary’s America: The Secret History of the Democratic Party, Woody Allen, Melissa McCarthy