The success of the film from Pixar animation studios is no surprise.
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“Now You See Me 2” drops to fourth place with an estimated weekend box office of $9.6 million, making its domestic take $41.3 million and $91 million globally in its two weeks in release. The previous record holder was Shrek the Third, which opened to $121.6 million in 2007.
Overseas, Finding Dory added another $US50 million to its haul from 29 global markets, including Australia, Argentina, Russia and China, where its $17.5 million debut ranks as the biggest ever for a Pixar release. Until now, Pixar’s best was Toy Story 3 (2010) with $110.3 million. It’s also a nice rebound for Pixar, whose last film, The Good Dinosaur, grossed just $123.1m over its entire theatrical run.
The film was highly anticipated by families, teens and adults because of the strong affection for the original film. The Andrew Stanton-helmed film drew over $528 million internationally, with a combined total of 5.7 billion Yuan ($868 million).
There has been no word from the writers or producers about this issue yet, probably because the overall reaction to “Finding Dory” was overwhelmingly positive. That was a box-office weekend record for an animated film.
With help from Nemo and Marlin, Dory the forgetful fish embarks on a quest to reunite with her mother and father.
Finding Dory centres around the blue tang fish, voiced by Ellen DeGeneres, who suffers from short-term memory loss.
Disney’s Executive Vice-President of Distribution Dave Hollis was particularly heartened that the film did such robust late night business on both Friday and Saturday.
The driving force behind “Finding Dory” was an audience of young and female viewers.
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The Conjuring 2 comes in third with $15.6 million (GBP10.9 million), while Now You See Me 2 and Warcraft close out the top five, respectively. Yet it is a far different matter at the box office, as the sequel not only almost doubled the opening weekend of Nemo but shattered the all-time opening weekend record for an animated movie.
