In one of the busiest movie release weekends of 2016, several titles made interesting debuts at the box office.
Let’s start with Independence Day 2: Resurgence, a direct sequel to 1996’s mega-hit that spent three weeks at #1 and grossed $306,169,000 at the domestic box office against a budget of only $75,000,000. The sequel looks like it will do just OK by the time it exits theaters in a few months, especially when considering estimates have it pegged as making only $41,600,000 from Thursday night to Sunday morning. This is extremely underwhelming since films usually make the most money in their opening week and I don’t foresee Independence Day 2: Resurgence pulling in more than $80,000,000 by weeks end. Being that the budget of this movie was $185,000,000 factoring in media marketing, I bet you the bigwigs at FOX are biting their nails right now. And let me not forget to mention that this title was only the #2 movie of the weekend, being beaten by Finding Dory and its $73,234,000 in ticket sales.
Then we move on to The Shallows, which is being hailed as the best shark attack movie since Jaws. Released by SONY to 2,962 theaters nationwide, The Shallows looks to be the real success story of the week. Produced on a budget of $22,000,000 including media marketing, the shark horror-thriller reeled in $16,700,000 in ticket sales over the weekend and is bound to swim past its production cost mark by midweek. It looks like it’ll be smooth sailing from here on out and it could turn out to be one of the most lucrative horror titles of 2016. It still wasn’t able to beat other titles that debuted and continued to dominate this weekend, though, and The Shallows came in at #4 by Sunday morning.
And in other news… The Conjuring 2 continues to be a dominating horror film franchise and reaps in $7,222,000 in ticket sales over the weekend; just missing the top five by less than half a million dollars. Its total gross haunts its way to $86,906,000 and it’ll be interesting to see if it can cross the $100,000,000 by Friday. If not, then I definitely think it’ll happen in the next two weeks. Also, The Neon Demon, which was released to only 783 theaters in America came in at the #15 spot with $660,000 in ticket sales.
Top Five This Weekend:
#1 – Finding Dory – $73,234,000
#2 – Independence Day 2: Resurgence – $41,600,000
#3 – Central Intelligence – $18,370,000
#4 – The Shallows – $16,700,000
#5 – Free State of Jones – $7,705,000
