Box Office: Dory Keeps Swimming as Other Pets Rise.
Sunday, July 10, 2016 at 1:00PM This weekend Dory swam easily past Captain America to become the biggest grossing US hero of the year. (Captain America still leads internationally by a lot, which is funny if you think about it). That's quite impressive for a forgetful blue tang who could have gone 'straight to video' -- Wait, are we still saying that? If not, what's the new phrase. I'm scared of what this means for the future with all those cheapie animated sequels but it is what happened. The current top ten of 2016 includes only two originals (Zootopia & Central Intelligence) but otherwise it's all brand extensions / revisions. It didn't use to be this way but it's been a slow erosion. Consider by comparison: 2006's top ten had 5 originals; 1996 had 6; 1986 had 7. Since we get less original hits every year how soon until we have none?
It should be noted that an original won the weekend but since The Secret Life of Pets famously steals so shamelessly from the Toy Story template, and since it's been promoting itself for what seems like YEARS already it feels like it's a sequel to itself so should it count? Animated films continue to be the safest box office bets.
Mike and Dave performed fairly well in its opening weekend and The Legend of Tarzan had a strong second weekend. In platform release Captain Fantastic had a decent debut with a teensy tiny theater count: not terrible, not great. Will it win strong word of mouth? We deserve more Viggo in our lives but if we don't support his movie we won't get it.
TOP WIDE
800+ screens. arrows indicate gaining or losing screens
🔺01 Secret Life of Pets $103.1 NEW
🔻02 The Legend of Tarzan $20.6 (cum. $81.4) Review
🔺03 Finding Dory $20.3 (cum. $422.5) Review
🔺04 Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates $16.6 NEW
🔺05 The Purge: Election Year $11.7 (cum. $58.1)
🔺06 Central Intelligence $8.1 (cum. $108.3)
🔻07 Independence Day: Resurgence $7.7 (cum. $91.4)
🔻08 The BFG $7.6 (cum. $38.7) Review
🔻09 The Shallows $4.8 (cum. $45.8) Costume Honors
🔻10 The Conjuring 2 $1.7 (cum. $99.3) Heroes and Villains
🔻11 Now You See Me 2 $1.3 (cum. $62.2)
🔻12 Free State of Jones $1.3 (cum. $19.2)
TOP LIMITED
Less than 800 screens. Excluding previously wide.
🔺01 Sultan $2.2 (cum. $3.2) NEW
🔺02 Our Kind of Traitor $731K ($2.2)
🔻03 Swiss Army Man $690K ($3.1) Best Actor
🔺04 Hunt for the Wilderpeople $413K (cum. $754K) Review
🔻05 Love & Friendship $326K (cum. $12.9) Review, Podcast, Best Picture
🔻06 The Lobster $309K (cum. $8) Reviewish, Podcast
🔻07 Maggie's Plan $180K (cum. $2.9) Review
🔺08 Cold War 2 $165K NEW
🔺09 The Music of Strangers $144K (cum. $566K)
🔺10 Weiner-Dog $105K (cum. $288K)
🔺11 Captain Fantastic $98K NEW Review
🔻12 Genius $80K (cum. $1.2) Review
What movies did you catch this week? Remember to watch Gentlemen Prefer Blondes on Netflix for Tuesday night's "Best Shot" party.
Reader Comments (23)
Not to depress you, but the top 10 films of 1991 (a quarter of a century ago) were
Terminator 2: Judgment Day (sequel)
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves ("remake")
Beauty and the Beast (original musical based on previously extremely existing material)
The Silence of the Lambs (the second Lecter movie)
City Slickers
Hook ("sequel")
The Addams Family (TV adaptation)
Sleeping with the Enemy (based on the novel)
Father of the Bride (remake)
The Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear (sequel)
That's show biz...
I saw " The Purge: Election Year" an effective B movie action thriller with a nasty satirical bite. The director is a John Carpenter fan- even down to the throbbing musical score- Carpenter would have probably given the chase scenes a bit more style
Caught up on season 4 of "Project Greenlight", which had dynamite material and personalities but really loses momentum after episode 4. They should have a clearer sense of structure going in, and better overall continuity/sense of process. And of course the resulting film didn't really amount to anything.
Saw "Re-Animator" for the first time - I'm a horror fan, cult fan, 80s fan, and this still felt underwhelming. Plot and pacing sparse, but inventive effects and set pieces.
Tarzan is definitely doing better than expected... the poor BFG
If Matt and Ben really want to open the doors with "Project Greelight" than "cast" a director who has something to say with his film- the self serving idiot in the last season- ended up making some bland rom com which would have gone from the slash pile to the shredder. And how a woman or a minority director next season?
I saw The Tamarind Seed with Julie Andrews and Omar Sharif,great support from Sylvia Sims.
Close-up: Goodness, that was powerful. The ending had me choking back tears and that was a stunning final shot.
Goodbye to Language: Eh, didn't get it.
The Lego Movie: It's okay. Don't get how it became the hit it did, but it's pleasantly clever and random.
They Made Me a Fugitive: Nasty Brit-Noir from the late 40s. Definitely recommend it.
A Bigger Splash: Eh, not as bad as I am Love. A mediocre film with good qualities (Schoenharts, Fiennes, cinematography).
Spirited Away. Again. My partner had never seen it. It's one of my absolute favorite films, period. Definitely top 10, maybe even top 5.
I mostly watched festival screeners and documentaries for a prize I'm helping judge. Nothing particularly excellent apart from the Mia Wasikowska short featured in MADLY.
THE BFG always struck me as something that would do better internationally in places like the UK and Australia than in the USA. It also reminds me a lot of HUGO in that big-budget-colour-corrected-visual-effects-human-story that nonetheless audiences just didn't leap too.
So good to see THE PURGE 3 going well. It had a smaller fall than both earlier installments. That franchise is a particularly fascinating one in terms of box office performance.
Illumunation are the new Pixar in many ways. They had a big early hit (DESPICABLE ME/TOY STORY), a less-well received but still successful follow up (HOP/BUG'S LIFE) a supernova sequel (DESPICABLE ME 2 and, I guess, MINIONS/TOY STORY 2) and now THE SECRET LIFE OF PETS can kind of me equated to their FINDING NEMO. Who's placing bets on how high SING goes later in the year?
Summer is often dreadful movies but they do seem to be getting more and more like Saturday morning cartoons of years past. Something to engage children, make money for theaters with food purchases, and then they are quickly forgotten.
I saw Hunt of the Wilderpeople and enjoyed it. Very beautiful to look at (New Zealand) fresh, funny and a nice change of pace. Sam Neill is great. I have liked him all the way from A Cry in the Dark, Plenty, Jurrassic Park to Peaky Blinders. Great actor and he is good in this movie with the young lead.
I re-watched Bandits, but with the audio commentary on for the first time. Billy BobThornton was all Angie this and Angie that. And I was like, there is no Angie character in this film?! And then I was like 'Oh, THAT Angie'. Lol.
I like that this site will promote "only for white people" movies that nobody sees like Captain Fantastic (I mean, look at that atrocious twee poster) and at the same time trash Bollywood movies for outgrossing these precious white indie movies - not in this article but in frequent box office articles on this and many other sites. Fucking laughable.
I get that the majority of cinema aficionados in this country are white but the implicit bias and subtle racism toward movies that don't fit a certain mold and are therefore so thoroughly dismissed is sad and disheartening. That its encouraged by film academics like Nick Davis is just icing on the cake.
White progressivism everyone.
WeExist, what did you think of Sultan?
We Exist - not sure how this is "trashing" Bollywood movies but to each their own. And Nick Davis seems like an exceptionally misguided target for cries of "racism" since he sees films from all over the world and often discusses African cinema which so few cinephiles know anything about.
I decided to stop watching superheroes movies, life is so much better now.
I watched Our Little Sister and From Afar, enjoyed both of them.
We deserve more Viggo in our lives but if we don't support his movie we won't get it.
He's a man. He'll always have opportunities to book lead roles. Like Colin Farrell who loses money for Hollywood yet continues to remain a priority for the patriarchal white supremacy -- it doesn't matter what kind of box office his little indie dramedy produces.
It's amazing how blind some people are. Attacking TFE for trashing foreign cinema and claiming its racist is so bizarre.
..."only for white people" movies that nobody sees like Captain Fantastic...
What a load.
I'd chalk WeExist up to being somewhere between a troll and horribly misguided.
Jaragon - Given that Project Greenlight hasn't produced a single successful film (I enjoy the show but never saw any of the films in full), I'm almost weary of a woman or person of color getting selected because it might do more damage to their career than good (they'll be judged more harshly for the film's failure). In saying that, the exposure can't hurt... I guess?
Wiener-Dog. Classic Solondz - profoundly sad, bitterly funny, misanthropic, but with moments of grace and aching humanity that just knocked me flat. One of his best.
The Invitation. A great, disorienting "which one is the crazy person here?" psychological thriller for its first 70 minutes. Loses steam once it resolves into a more conventional thriller, but Karyn Kusama knocks it out of the park regardless. Hope she's getting a lot of work off of this.
4th Man Out. Charming, surprisingly well made comedy about four friends, and how all of them are affected when one of them comes out of the closet. Lots of cliches, but it's very sweet and well acted and fun.
The Legend of Tarzan. Going by the reviews, I was expecting much worse, but this is a solid, entertaining, old fashioned adventure epic.
Clean, Shaven. A mesmerizing, terrifying descent into a very troubled mind. Loved it, can't believe Lodge Kerrigan has only made a couple of films in the 20+ years since.
Mrs. Miniver - my first Greer Garson film. Wow, she is just so lovely. To quote Nigel Barker's favorite cliche from America's Next Top Model, the camera just loves her. And her performance was fine although I haven't seen her co-nominees so I can't say how much she deserved the win (and I have no idea how Walter Pidgeon got nominated for that nothing of a performance). I'd agree with Nick Davis' recent takeaway from it - overly sentimental and schmaltzy but with some really stunning sequences that have stuck with me.
I watched Sayonara for the first time and thought it was a very well acted film. Red Buttons is such an underappreciated actor and his work in this film was worthy of the Oscar win. I also thought Miyoshi Umeki was quite touching and deserved her Oscar too. I rewatched both Marty and Big and both are still wonderful films.
I finally saw "Frozen". It was cute. But it's no "Incredibles" or "The Lion King"