1. Star Trek Beyond (review here)- $59.6M
The crew of the Starship Enterprise will need to travel to far off lands for Star Trek Beyond to be a hit. The $185M film, the third in J.J. Abrams' rebooted franchise and the first directed by Justin Lin, opened with $59M plus $30M overseas, which isn't bad but considerably less than its predecessors. You'd think the 50th anniversary of the creation of 'Trek' would give it a boost, but honestly the only people who care were going to see the movie anyway. So where does the series go from here? A fourth film is already in the works so there will definitely be another, but will there be some kind of retooling? Who knows? Maybe a crossover with The Next Generation crew? Is that even possible?
2. The Secret Life of Pets- $29.3M/$260.7M
3. Ghostbusters- $21.6M/$86.8M
While the opening weekend for Paul Feig's divisive Ghostbusters relaunch wasn't great, it was good enough to have Sony talking about a sequel. And now in week two we see the film holding up fairly well, dropping 53% and earning an additional $36M overseas for a $122M haul. That brings the $144M budget within grasp, but clearly this can only be considered a modest success rather than the smash it could have been if costs were lower. Expect some re-examining of the budget whenever the Ghostbusters get called up once again.
4. Lights Out- $21.6M
James Wan keeps showing the studios how to really cultivate hit franchises without bloated budgets. The guy who practically invented the low budget horror has done it again as the producer of Lights Out, with the buzz $5M thriller opening with a robust $21.6M. Big names? Who needs 'em? Teresa Palmer is by far the most recognizable name of the bunch, or perhaps Maria Bello, but nobody comes to see these movies for the casts. The marketing was spot-on, targeting fans of The Conjuring 2 and The Purge: Election Year, two similarly small-budgeted horrors that did big business this year.
5. Ice Age: Collision Course (review here)- $21M
This summer's bout with sequel-itis continues with Ice Age: Collision Course, the fifth movie in the popular prehistoric franchise. The film opened with $21M which is way down from the previous ones, no surprise, but it's always been overseas where the money is made. The last two movies have scored more than $860M each, the vast majority of it from overseas, and that is the case this time as well with $134M already earned. At the rate it's going we'll be able to name Ice Age the highest-grossing animated franchise ever, supplanting Shrek.
6. Finding Dory- $7.2/$460.1M
7. The Legend of Tarzan- $6.4M/$115.8M
8. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates- $4.4M/$40.3M
9. Hillary's America- $3.7M/$3.79M
10. The Infiltrator- $3.2/$12.2M
