Sony Pictures Entertainment is relishing a big, and quite surprising, weekend at the box office.
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Sausage Party, an adult animation in which Seth Rogen, Kristen Wiig and Jonah Hill give voice to foul-mouthed food products, raked in an estimated $33.6m (£26m).
The villainous team-up took $58.7 million from 15,600 non-US cinemas in 62 territories, the worldwide haul totalling $465.4 million. “‘Sausage Party’ again proves that studios with guts stand by their edgiest filmmakers through thick and thin”.
Defying critics as well as competition from two new releases, the DC comics-inspired Suicide Squad topped the U.S. box office for a second straight weekend, estimates from industry tracker Exhibitor Relations showed. The film did see a 67 percent decline during its second weekend but brought in $43.7 million raising its total domestic gross to $222.8 million during the first 10 days of release.
Joel Kinnaman, who plays Colonel Rick Flagg in DC’s “Suicide Squad”, shared that the negative reviews that the film received did more good than harm. In other words, it’s possible that Suicide Squad – despite its success – is set to under-perform, and perhaps to be remembered less fondly than its initial box office performance would suggest. It also has been denied an entry into China, depriving it of as much as $100 million in revenue from the world’s second biggest market for film.
“Pete’s Dragon”, Disney’s new remake of the 1977 original, premiered in third spot after collecting $21.5 million over the weekend. The low budget ($19 million) animated R-rated film about talking foodstuffs pulled down over $36 million and could have legs to continue for a few weeks yet.
Disney Executive Vice President of Distribution Dave Hollis expects “Pete’s Dragon” to end its run domestically in the $80 million range with a little more from overseas.
The only other new release of the weekend was the Meryl Streep fronted Florence Foster Jenkins. The studio released “Sausage Party” in 3,103 locations, and it now holds the record for the largest August opening ever for an animated film.
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“Jason Bourne”, starring Matt Damon in the latest chapter of Universal’s enduring spy thriller, came in fourth, with $13.8 million.
