Box Office Results Show Strong Carry Over Performers


The box office results for Friday definitely show that Disney’s The Jungle Book clearly has more mojo to shoulder out, even with highly anticipated debuts running against it.

Disney films have always been a big seller in the cinema world. But Universal has been on par with the same kind of results, especially given the kind of year they had at the box office in 2015. Their record breaking numbers showed that the classic film company could still put out some serious hits.

But Universal’s debut of The Huntsman: Winter’s War did not have that 2015 mojo working for it and fell far short at the box office behind reigning champ, The Jungle Book. Disney also has a solid performance record at the box office with many children’s themed films that have been pure gold for the company.

Just consider the kind of box office results that Disney put up last year in December when it released Star Wars: The Force Awakens. After the company bought the LucasFilm brand, it has been on a rigorous journey to blaze a trail in the cinema world and put out some major box office numbers.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens went on to smash the domestic box office record set by Avatar back in 2009, which sat nicely on top of the list with $760 million in the U.S. according to Box Office Mojo.

But Star Wars: The Force Awakens didn’t just break that box office record, it completely destroyed it, pulling in over $935 million and still growing. But even though it broke the domestic box office record, it fell quite short of Avatar’s worldwide record of $2.78 billion. Star Wars: The Force Awakens has only pulled in $2.06 billion in that category, leaving it over $700 million behind.

Friday’s box office haul put The Jungle Book at $16.3 million and The Huntsman: Winter’s War at $7.2 million. With those two movies being the top 2 draws for the weekend, that puts the box office to a fairly weak start for late April. For those who do not know, most of the summer blockbuster season movies actually start at the end of March and keep going until the start of September.

This year, Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice kicked off the summer blockbuster season and has grossed $315 million in the U.S. so far. That number still continues to rise, but the film itself is starting to fizzle out. By most estimates, that box office number is fairly weak compared to all the hype the film has gotten over the last year. The movie is also the first of its kind with DC pairing two of its biggest superheroes.

The year has started out fairly weak in terms of box office numbers. There is no real explanation for that other than this could be due to a lot of poor reviews. Although reviews have classically not scared people away from seeing a film that has had a lot of hype attached to it, that trend may be beginning to change.

It all started out when Batman V Superman Dawn of Justice got ripped apart by reviewers all over the web and the media. Although the film still debuted to strong box office numbers, its fire quickly died out.

But now, according to Deadline, the film The Huntsman: Winter’s War also suffered the same review curse, and it seems as though it has suffered from it in the beginning.

There has also been speculation within the industry that The Huntsman: Winter’s War could be reaching a box office summit of around $60 million, which could be disastrous for Universal and likely end the franchise.

[Image via Universal]

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