The Jungle Book was the biggest winner at the weekend box office, dominating with $103.6 million. This figure not only ranks the movie as having the second biggest opening for April in history, coming up behind the $147.2 million Furious 7 raked in, but also extends Disney's success in making live-action adaptations of beloved animated classics.
The movie joins Alice in Wonderland, Cinderella and Maleficent in showing that bringing to life fairy tales can be considered its very own brand. Beauty and the Beast, which is due to come out on March 17, 2017, and new versions of Peter Pan and Cruella De Ville will follow and are expected to show the same.
Maybe a big part of The Jungle Book coming out as a big winner in ticket sales is that it won over the audience, being rated as 95 percent "Fresh" on Rotten Tomatoes. As it is essentially a children's story, the movie was expected to have a lot of families watching, and true enough, 49 percent of the audience were from the category.
With an A from CinemaScore, The Jungle Book is believed to be set up for a healthy run in the coming days and weeks. For its opening weekend, the movie earned $10.4 million on Imax, with 43 percent of its domestic opening gross for the period coming from 3D screens.
Jon Favreau directed The Jungle Book, which saw Bill Murray, Idris Elba, Scarlett Johansson, Ben Kingsley, Lupita Nyong'o, Giancarlo Esposito, Christopher Walken and Neel Sethi bringing the Rudyard Kipling classic to life.
As part of promotions for the film, the cast posed with their animal counterparts in CG, each still showcasing the representation of their characters.
The Jungle Book was followed by Barbershop: The Next Cut (also on its opening weekend) with $20.2 million, The Boss (last weekend's big winner) in third place with $10.2 million, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in fourth with $9 million and Zootopia (another Disney movie) in fifth with $8.2 million.
Criminal was another new entry for the weekend and it rounded up its debut with $5.8 million to come in at sixth place. Others in the top 10 for the weekend box office include: My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 (seventh with $3.3 million), Miracles from Heaven (eighth with $1.9 million), God's Not Dead 2 (ninth with $1.7 million) and Eye in the Sky (tenth with $1.6 million).
