Mowgli learns a little something about fire in his adventures in The Jungle Book. So it’s fitting, I suppose, that the movie itself was a box office scorcher.
Sparked by strong reviews and some high-temperature anticipation, Disney’s live-action The Jungle Book burned up the charts with a white-hot $103.6 million (estimated, of course, at this early juncture) to not just singe the competition, but barbecue it. Just how all-consuming was The Jungle Book inferno? Consider that the other 50 movies in theaters made $70.5 million … combined. That means Mowgli and his motley band of beasts out-earned the rest of the field by around $33 million. Talk about your king of the jungle.
Oh, and those box office blisters seem to be spreading overseas, too. The flick has expanded to 49 countries, which this weekend collectively brought in another $136.1 million. The Jungle Book has now earned a wild $290.9 million worldwide—or about $85 million more than the original Walt Disney animated classic made in its entire theatrical run back in the day. (Not accounting for inflation.)
But even if the weekend’s other movies were serenading The Jungle Book with their own version of “I Wanna Be Like You,” a few still had something more to sing about.
Barbershop: The Next Cut entered the box office fray with a nice-and-tidy $20.2 million to earn the weekend’s silver medal. The Boss, last week’s champ, took a terrific tumble, but it still managed to collect around $10.2 million for third.
The heroes of Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, continue to loiter around the box office’s Top Five, perhaps looking for more buildings to smash. The $9 million the flick earned this week (for a fourth-place finish) boosts its total North American take to $311.3 million, solidifying its place as the year’s second highest-grossing movie (behind Deadpool).
Another collection of Disney beasts—the animated critters from Zootopia—banked $8.2 million to close out the Top Five. It held off Kevin Costner’s star-studded—and star-crossed—thriller Criminal, which finished sixth with $5.9 million. Perhaps Costner and Co. would argue that to finish outside the Top Five was in itself a crime. But as the guy who reviewed the thing, I’d argue that the film got off easy.
Final figures update: 1. The Jungle Book, $103.3 million; 2. Barbershop: The Next Cut, $20.2 million; 3. The Boss, $10 million; 4. Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, $9 million; 5. Zootopia, $8.1 million; 6. Criminal, $5.8 million.
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