Weekend estimates: Jungle Cruise opens with impressive $34.2 million

August 1, 2021

Jungle Cruise

Get ready for Big Thunder Mountain Railroad: The Movie everyone. Disney’s strategy of converting its theme park rides into adventure movies is hitting pay dirt again this weekend with Jungle Cruise on its way to a $34.2-million debut, according to the studio’s Sunday morning projection. That’s substantially above our model’s prediction, and it’s not the only movie to be earning more than expected: The Green Knight will earn about $6.8 million this weekend to land in second place. Those two films more than make up for the softness of the returning titles, and we are looking at a welcome “up” weekend for the market as a whole.





Jungle Cruise’s debut is the second-biggest opening weekend for a new franchise movie based on a theme park ride, a much-coveted title previously held by The Haunted Mansion’s $24.3 million back in 2003. The record holder still remains Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl, which opened with $46.6 million in July, 2003 and blew past all expectations to $305 million in total, establishing one of Disney’s most lucrative franchises in the process.

Whether Jungle Cruise can turn into a franchise will depend in part on its legs over the next few weeks. Recent week-to-week trends have been poor for returning films, and much of the blame for that (whether rightly or not) is being directed at the simultaneous releases on streaming platforms. Jungle Cruise is another Disney film to get a premium release on Disney+, and the studio reports it has earned over $30 million worldwide via that channel this weekend. They are pointing out that that gives the film the third-largest opening of the pandemic era, when accounting for all revenue sources. If we assume that half of the Disney+ revenue comes from North America, the domestic “opening” sits around $49 million, which is at the upper end of expectations for a film like this under normal circumstances. Dumbo, for example, opened with $46 million in 2019, and A Wrinkle in Time with $33 million in 2018.

Happy as Disney should be for the strong opening for Jungle Cruise, A24 also have reason to celebrate, with The Green Knight coming in well ahead of the model’s prediction and snagging second place this weekend. It’s worth noting that the film’s $6.8 million this weekend is almost identical to the studio’s $6.56 million first weekend for Midsommar a couple of years ago.

Sadly, Stillwater just missed the model’s prediction with $5.12 million, compared to $5.2 million. That means the model’s overall estimate of general moviegoers currently attending theaters stays at 53% this weekend. Jungle Cruise’s over-performance, which the model actually thinks is the best for any film released during the pandemic, moves its estimate of family-audience attendance back up to 49% from 48%.

Going into the weekend, the model predicted a down weekend for the market, but it looks like we’ll see things tick up a bit thanks to the top two titles. That’s excellent news going into what is likely to prove to be a challenging August, albeit one that should start on a high-ish note with The Suicide Squad next weekend.

- Weekend studio estimates

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, F9: The Fast Saga, The Suicide Squad, Jungle Cruise, Black Widow, Space Jam: A New Legacy, The Green Knight, Tom and Jerry, Stillwater, Old, Snake Eyes: G.I. Joe Origins, M. Night Shyamalan