Wes Ball‘s “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” finally brought some much-needed momentum to the May box office. We can almost certainly now say that the summer movie season has officially begun.
The latest ‘Apes’ movie had a domestic debut of $58.5 million and $72.7 million overseas for a global start of $131.2 million. The Sunday estimates had it at $56 million, but there a word of mouth boost on Sunday had it overperform estimates. This is a big win for 20th Century.
Meanwhile, Universal’s “The Fall Guy” continued in its struggle to put asses into seats. It’s coming off a disappointing $27.7 million opening last week. This past weekend, the Ryan Gosling/Emily Blunt action flick placed second with an estimated $13.7 million, down 51% for a 10-day total of $49.7 million. Overseas, it only earned $9.4 million, placing its global tally to $103.7 million. The budget is said to have been around $150 million.
Finally, Zendaya-starrer “Challengers”, from Amazon MGM Studios, has some decent legs. It held strong at No. 3 in its third weekend, only dipping 38 percent to an estimated $4.7 million for a domestic total of $38.4 million through Sunday. It’s so far made $68.7 million globally off a $50 million budget. It’ll be made available on VOD this coming Friday.
While James L. Brooks teased last year that "we'll soon be seeing" Jack Nicholson, 89, act again, and that he was "reading scripts," that idea has now been shut down by his close friend Michael Douglas, 82.