1. The Secret Life of Pets- $50.5M/$203.1M
It took less than two weeks for Illumination's The Secret Life of Pets to roll over the $200M mark, slipping only 51% and earning an additional $50M. At this point it's doing as well as any of llumination's Despicable Me films, including Minions, proving that audiences really just love this studio right now. Toss in overseas numbers and the film has already scored $254M which is pretty good for a $75M production.
2. Ghostbusters (review here)- $46M
After tons of bitching and moaning that Paul Feig's Ghostbusters would be the end of civilization or something, the reboot of the 1984 classic opened with a strong $46M. That's right in the ballpark of the projections and ranks as the third biggest live-action debut of the summer, only trailing behind superhero flicks X-Men: Apocalypse and Captain America: Civil War. Most importantly, the mostly female-led comedy has been well-received overall with a B+ Cinemascore and 73% on Rotten Tomatoes, meaning it could be leggy enough to stick around for a long time. Doubtful it ever claims the top spot with Star Trek Beyond and Jason Bourne looming like evil box office poltergeists. Now are these really blockbuster numbers, though? Maybe they would be if the budget, reportedly at $144M, could have been trimmed down. However, Sony should be happy enough to make sure the Ghostbusters get another call.
3. The Legend of Tarzan- $11.1M/$103M
4. Finding Dory- $11M/$445.5M
Five weeks into its run and Pixar's Finding Dory has surpassed Shrek 2 as the highest-grossing animated feature in U.S. history. You'd think that honor would have gone to something like Toy Story 3, which has greater critical support, but nope, it only earned $415M domestic. Add this to another in Pixar's long list of incredible accomplishments. Overall the film has $721M worldwide.
5. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates- $7.5M/$31.3M
6. The Purge: Election Year- $6M/$71M
7. Central Intelligence- $5.3M/$117.5M
8. The Infiltrator (review here)- $5.2M/$6.7M
Challenging the Ghostbusters this week was the Bryan Cranston-led Pablo Escobar thriller, The Infiltrator, which probably not a lot of people even knew existed. The small-ish release debuted on Wednesday and has been relatively well reviewed, which may explain why the numbers are a bit bigger than expected for a movie that really doesn't fit into the summer blockbuster season. By comparison, Matthew McConaughey's Free State of Jones only opened about $1M better, and has only just cracked $20M total. Not sure The Infiltrator will get that far but it wasn't really expected to.
9. The BFG- $3.7M/$47.3M
I really just kind of want it to either shoot up in the charts all of a sudden (it won't) or fall of the face of the Earth, because it's depressing to see one of Spielberg's most enjoyable movies do this poorly. So far the Roald Dahl adaptation has only $64M worldwide, and that's just insane.
10. Independence Day: Resurgence- $3.4M/$98.5M
While it didn't do much here, Roland Emmerich's Independence Day sequel has $215M internationally for $314M overall. Might that be enough to justify wrapping up this trilogy with one more film?
