Despite the release of a number of new movies in wide and limited release, Disney•Pixar‘s animated sequel Finding Dory won its second weekend at the box office with $73.2 million, down about 46% from its record-setting opening weekend. It has grossed $287 million domestically so far, making it Pixar Animation’s fifth highest-grossing movie, as it has already surpassed the domestic gross of Monsters University in 2013. It should surpass Up‘s $293 million this coming week and the $340 million the original Finding Nemo grossed in 2003 by next weekend.
Finding Dory added another $37 million internationally over the weekend to bring its overseas total to $110.3 million and $397 million globally with many territories still to get the animated sequel. (Universal Pictures’ own animated offering The Secret Life of Pets did open internationally with $15.2 million in advance of its North American release on July 8.)
The widest new release of the weekend was director Roland Emmerich’s sequel Independence Day: Resurgence (20th Century Fox), starring Liam Hemsworth and fellow newcomers Maika Monroe and Jessie Usher, joining returning cast Jeff Goldblum, Bill Pullman, Brent Spiner, Judd Hirsch and Vivica A. Fox. It had been 20 years since Emmerich’s original Independence Day was released in 1996 when it grossed over $300 million, but clearly, this sequel didn’t have the nostalgia factor going for it like last year’s Jurassic World and reviews were less than favorable. Resurgence opened with an estimated $4 million from Thursday previews and $16.8 million on Friday in 4,068 theaters, and it ended up with an estimated $41.6 million for the weekend. That’s quite a bit less than the $50.2 million the original movie opened with and that was based on 1996 movie ticket prices.
Internationally, Independence Day: Resurgence opened in 57 markets, where it earned $102.1 million including $37.3 million from 6,047 screens in China, and Korea, the UK and Mexico each bringing in around $7 million each. $15.8 million of the movie’s global opening came from its IMAX showings, $5 million of that coming from 385 North American IMAX screens.
Third place went to Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart’s action-comedy Central Intelligence (New Line/WB) with $18.4 million, down 48% in its second weekend. It has grossed $69.3 million domestically so far and has earned another $14.3 million overseas.
Blake Lively’s shark thriller The Shallows (Sony) opened in fourth place with $16.7 million in 2,962 theaters (averaging $5,638), making it one of the weekend’s bigger surprises since most projections had it making less than $10 million. Surprisingly, the movie received some of the best reviews of the weekend with 74% Fresh reviews on Rotten Tomatoes.
Filmmaker Gary Ross (The Hunger Games) teamed with Oscar-winning actor Matthew McConaughey to tell the story of Civil War rebel Newton Knight in Free State of Jones (STX Entertainment), which received a rare summer release for an adult drama. Opening in 2,815 theaters on Friday, it grossed an estimated $7.8 million for the weekend, or $2,760 per theater.
Just behind it in sixth place by a very narrow margin, James Wan’s horror sequel The Conjuring 2 (New Line/WB) added another $7.7 million in its third weekend to bring its total domestic gross to $87 million. It also brought in $21 million from 9,250 international screens, bringing its total to $156 million so far.
The other returning sequel, Now You See Me 2 (Summit/Lionsgate) added another $5.6 million (down 40% in its third weekend), bringing its domestic gross to $52.1 million.
The rest of the Top 10 ended up with less than $2.5 million for the weekend.
Also opening in wide release was Nicolas (Drive) Refn’s L.A. thriller The Neon Demon (Amazon/Broad Green), starring Elle Fanning and Jena Malone, which opened in 783 theaters on Friday, but it ended up outside the Top 10 with just $606,000, or $774 per theater.
As far as limited releases, a lot of films that premiered at the Sundance Film Festival were released this weekend, including Swiss Army Man (A24), the feature film debut by the Daniels directing team, starring Paul Dano and Daniel Radcliffe. The unconventional buddy comedy, about a man stranded on an island and the corpse that rescues him, opened in three theaters in New York and L.A. where it grossed $114,000, or $38,000 per theater. It’s expected to expand much wider next Friday, July 1.
Todd Solontz’s new film Wiener-Dog (IFC Films), starring Danny DeVito, Ellen Burstyn, Kieran Culkin, Julie Delpy and Greta Gerwig, opened with $27,000 in two theaters while the doc Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words (Sony Pictures Classic) opened with $18,000 in the same number of theaters.
