Once again, 'Boss Baby' and 'Beauty' battle for box office dominance
Baby is still the boss, for now.
The family-friendly animated feature starring Alec Baldwin's voice remained atop the box office charts for the second weekend in a row — and the second since it was released. Domestic weekend estimates point to a $26.3 million weekend for The Boss Baby.
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Trailing closely behind at No. 2 is Disney's live-action re-telling of Beauty and the Beast, which is projected to make $25 million in the U.S. this weekend. Estimates for both movies are close enough right now that the top-two could easily switch once final weekend figures come in on Monday.
It's a repeat of last week, when Baby opened against Disney's then-three-week-old competition. Estimates pointed to a $1.5 million divide between the two — $49 million versus $47.5 million — and the gap only widened with the final tally: $50.2 million for Baby and $45.4 million for Beauty.
The tight weekend race is an illusion, however, and overall numbers tell the story more clearly. In the four weeks since Disney's latest live-action remake arrived, Beauty and the Beast has earned — including the latest estimate — a massive $432.3 million domestically. Baby, only two weeks in with $89.4 million in U.S. ticket sales, has little hope of catching up.
It's certainly not a bad performance, especially when you add in the additional $110.4 million (and counting) from foreign ticket sales. But it's not the billion-dollar movie that Beauty — with a worldwide total of $977.4 million — is days away from becoming.
Baby benefits most for being the first family-friendly animated feature to surface since The Lego Batman Movie opened on Feb. 10. It also brings a star-studded cast that includes Lisa Kudrow, Jimmy Kimmel, Steve Buscemi, and Tobey Maguire,
That family-friendly bump didn't help the weekend's current third-place finisher, Smurfs: The Lost Village. Sony's third Smurfs feature is looking at a $14 million opening weekend, based on current estimates.
The previous two movies combined for just shy of $1 billion in worldwide ticket sales, but U.S. figures notably accounted for just a quarter of that total. The bulk of the series' success to-date has come from foreign markets
That is likely to be true once again for The Lost Village. It's already been released in more than 30 foreign markets, and China — which rivals the U.S. as one of the largest film markets in the world — is still to come.
Expect big changes in the box office landscape next week as The Fate of the Furious and The Lost City of Z both hit theaters.
All current estimates provided by comScore and all historical figures come from Box Office Mojo.
