Don’t buy a blue tang fish. Just don’t. As Adam Holz pointed out a few blogs ago, the last thing the natural world needs is a run on blue tang fish.
But if you wanted to, hypothetically, buy one, it’d run you about $50 at Petco. And that means that Pixar’s forgetful fish Dory—if someone gave her all the money she pulled in at the box office this weekend—could buy herself about 2.7 million times.
Finding Dory, sequel to Disney/Pixar’s classic Finding Nemo, broke out of the year’s sequel slump in a massive way, banking an estimated $136.2 million in North America and netting a couple of box office records to boat—er, boot. It was the highest opening weekend for an animated movie in history, and it also notched the biggest opening day for an animated movie ever, floating to about $54.9 million (technically beating Shrek the Third’s $47 million debut).
Finding Dory’s victory marks the 11th time already this year that a Disney flick has topped the box office—not bad, considering it’s still just June. It’s also the third Disney movie to earn more than $100 million during its debut weekend this year, joining Captain America: Civil War ($179.1 million) and The Jungle Book ($103.3 million). Sing along with me now: Just keep earning, just keep earning …
With the local multiplex looking so fishy these days, there wasn’t a lot of extra green to go around. Central Intelligence, another newcomer, was the best of the rest. The Dwayne Johnson/Kevin Hart action/comedy mustered a modest box office bang, collecting $34.5 million for the weekend—not Dory money, certainly, but still enough to buy a nice, 24-carat goldfish or two.
The rest of the Top Five was populated by familiar faces from last week. The Conjuring 2, last week’s winner, slid to third with a frightening $15.6 million. Now You See Me 2 yanked another $9.7 million from its well-worn hat, and Warcraft somehow lured another $6.5 million worth of moviegoers into its CGI arms. Go figure.
Final figures update: 1. Finding Dory, $135.1 million; 2. Central Intelligence, $35.5 million; 3. The Conjuring 2, $14.9 million; 4. Now You See Me 2, $9.4 million; 5. Warcraft, $7.2 million.
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