Weekend Estimates: Finding Dory Surges to Biggest Animated Opening with $136.2 Million
June 19, 2016
Finding Dory is rewriting the record books this weekend, posting the biggest weekend ever for an animated film. Disney is projecting a total of $136.18 million in its first three days, which will easily break the record of $121.6 million set by Shrek the Third back in 2007. The previous top mark for a Pixar movie was Toy Story 3’s $110.3 million. With an A CinemaScore (for the 17th time straight for Pixar, per Disney), and 95% positive reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, the film should enjoy Pixar’s traditional good legs. In the Summer, that has meant a ratio between opening and final box office of somewhere between 3 and 4, which points towards a final box office somewhere between $400 million and $520 million for the fish pic. By way of comparison Finding Nemo earned $518 million, adjusted for inflation.
The international picture for Dory is a little complicated by the fact that it has only launched in 30% of international territories this weekend. The European football championships are dominating attention over there, and the studios are mostly avoiding opening films in the region at the moment. The film picked up $17.5 million in China, $7.6m in Australia, and a total of $50 million across 29 territories. When compared to the same territories, Finding Dory is 33% ahead of Inside Out, 51% ahead of Monsters University, and 63% ahead of Finding Nemo (not adjusted for inflation). It’s too early to draw any firm conclusions from this, but Pixar has traditionally delivered between $400 million and $500 million internationally (with Toy Story 3 topping their list with $654 million abroad), and this points to Dory being on the high end of that scale. My money is on the film joining Zootopia as Disney’s second billion-dollar animated hit of the year. Pixar’s record, the $1.069 billion earned by Toy Story 3, is definitely in danger.
Warner Bros. also has some reason to cheer this weekend thanks to a good debut from Central Intelligence with $34.5 million. That’s almost exactly the same income as the debut of Ride Along 2 earlier this year, and confirms once again the consistency of Kevin Hart at the domestic box office. It’ll be interesting to see if Dwayne Johnson can help boost the international performance for this one. So far, the film has posted $6.8 million in smaller territories, including number one openings in Austria, Israel, the Netherlands, Sweden and the German-speaking region of Switzerland.
The rest of the chart is looking pretty quiet this week. The biggest disappointment is the 73% drop of Warcraft in its second weekend. It has limped to $37.7 million domestically, a stark contrast to its $204 million to date in China, and over $300 million internationally.
- Finding Dory Comparisons
Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
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Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Central Intelligence, Warcraft, Finding Dory, Kevin Hart, Dwayne Johnson