‘Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom’ Roaring for $59 Million Weekend
By Dave McNary
LOS ANGELES (Variety.com) – The dinosaurs are still stomping all over domestic moviegoing as the second frame of “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” heads for a $59 million weekend, early estimates showed Friday.
Sony’s opening of “Sicario: Day of the Soldado” is heading for a solid $20 million at 3,055 North American locations. Lionsgate’s basketball comedy “Uncle Drew” will score about $16 million at 2,842 sites. And Disney’s third weekend of “Incredibles 2″ will continue to dazzle with about $40 million — a 50% decline, which will give the blockbuster a stunning $435 million by the end of the weekend.
Universal’s sophomore session of “” is pegged to decline about 60% from its opening weekend of $148 million, which was the 20th-best of all time. The Chris Pratt-led tentpole has pocketed $204.8 million in its first seven days domestically and about $809 million worldwide. Only 25 films have topped the $60 million domestic mark in their second weekends.
Josh Brolin and Benicio Del Toro return in the action-drama “,” a sequel to 2015’s “Sicario.” Friday’s early estimates showed a first-day take of $7 million, placing the violence-laden film well above box office forecasts between $10 million and $13 million. That’s a signal that “Day of the Soldado” may outperform the original film, which debuted with $12 million and finished with $47 million domestically.
Stefano Sollima took over directing duties from Denis Villeneuve while Taylor Sheridan returned to pen the script. “Day of the Soldado” sees Del Toro and Brolin reprising their roles as a former undercover operative and CIA agent, respectively. The film is averaging a 64% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The original movie, which also starred Emily Blunt, earned an impressive 93% rating on Rotten Tomatoes and went on to score three Oscar nominations.
“” had also pegged to launch with $10 million to $13 million at 2,742 sites. NBA player Kyrie Irving leads the Pepsi commercial-turned-feature-film about a down-on-his-luck basketball coach (Lil Rel Howery), who enlists basketball legend Uncle Drew to recruit a group of septuagenarian former ballers to play in Harlem’s Rucker Classic street ball tournament.
The sports comedy features a mash-up of athletes and comedians, including Shaquille O’Neal, Chris Webber, Reggie Miller, Nate Robinson, Lisa Leslie, Erica Ash, Tiffany Haddish, and Nick Kroll. “Uncle Drew” was directed by Charles Stone III and written by Jay Longino.
After a sluggish 2017, “,” “Ocean’s 8,” and “Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom” have bolstered the summer box office by 16% to $2.09 billion through June 27, according to ComScore. For the year, overall moviegoing is up 8.7% to $6.04 billion.
The fourth weekend of “Ocean’s 8” should finish fifth with about $8 million to lift the ensemble comedy to around $115 million domestically.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst with comScore, said that Disney-Marvel’s “Ant-Man And The Wasp” should continue the moviegoing momentum next weekend. Early tracking forecasted a $75 million opening weekend.
“This late June marketplace boasts an incredibly diverse assortment of films from which to chose as we await next week’s much-anticipated (and likely bigger-than-expected) debut of ‘Ant-Man And The Wasp’ while basking in the glow of a very strong summer that is currently enjoying an impressive 16% uptick vs. the summer of ’17 at this point,” he added.
