Disney's new take on “The Lion King” remained atop the box office this weekend, despite the biggest second-weekend drop off that one of their 'live action' remakes has seen. With $75.5M this weekend, the Jon Favreau directed, all-star cast driven (and highly faithful) remake now has a domestic standing of $351M, boosting its worldwide tally to a hefty $962M, leaving it finely poised to pounce over the $1B mark next weekend, making it the second Disney re-hash in as many weeks to do so after the Will Smith starring Aladdin reached the milestone this weekend.
And speaking of $1B Disney Movies, Marvel (and Disney's) “Spider-Man:Far From Home” became the ninth Movie in the MCU to join the club this weekend thanks to a $12.2M domestic gathering and a further $21M overseas, making it now (unsurprisingly) the highest grossing Spider-Man Movie ever made. Rounding out the Disney picks this week is Pixar's “Toy Story 4,” which took a heavy 36.5% drop off, all be it in its sixth weekend, bringing in $9.87M domestic and $19.74M elsewhere to bring its global total to $917M, meaning its push to join the $1B club may take a few weeks yet. Whilst it now sits around $90M away from the highest grosser in the franchise, Toy Story 3 ($1.067B).
The big new release of the weekend came from Quentin Tarantino and Sony with the highly anticipated “Once Upon A Time,,, In Hollywood.” Opening domestically nearly three weeks before it will be seen overseas (August 14th) the Tarantino homage to Hollywood, containing the mega star-power of Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, and Margot Robbie delivered the director the biggest debut of his career, amassing $40M in three days of opening, a huge win for any Movie that sits with a 2h 40m+ run time. Tarantino's new film dethroned the $38M of 2008's “Inglorious Bastards” that had sat as his biggest opening, and Sony will hope the film’s fine form carries it to overseas success in the weeks to come as it hopes (internationally) to get somewhere near, or surpass Tarantino's highest grosser, 2012's “Django Unchained” ($425M).
Elsewhere, future Oscar hopeful, A24's The Farewell, directed by Lulu Wang moved into 135 theatres, racking up another $1.55M as it awaits wide release, whilst Alexandre Aja's horror/thriller Crawl took a healthy $4M, bringing its domestic total to an impressive $31M (off a $13.5M budget) and worldwide total to $45M, thanks to another $3.4M internationally this weekend.
This weeks big hitters are waiting in trepidation as next week sees the arrival of the “Fast and Furious” spin off “Hobbs and Shaw,” starring notable box-office attractions Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, alongside Idris Elba. Universal's near $200M production will aim to get close to the $147M opening weekend of the biggest film in the franchise, Fast and Furious 7.
Having an insurance director is not uncommon in Hollywood. Aging filmmakers, in case a health issue arises, sometimes need to have one. It seems like that’s what might have occurred on “What Happens at Night.”