Cars 3 smokes Wonder Woman
LOS ANGELES — Racing to the top, Walt Disney Co.’s Cars 3 unseated Warner Bros.’ Wonder Woman after a twoweek box-office reign.
The Pixar film grossed an estimated $53.7 million in U.S. and Canadian theaters in its opening weekend, although it came in well below analyst expectations of $60 million.
Starring Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen, the series follows the ups and downs of a hot-shot race car looking to prove himself. The latest movie also features the voices of Cristela Alonzo, Larry the Cable Guy and Kerry Washington.
In its third week, Wonder Woman landed in second place with about $41.3 million. This brings its domestic gross to date to $275 million.
The weekend’s standout, however, is Lionsgate’s All Eyez on Me, which debuted to $26.4 million. Though only a third-place finish, it far surpassed analyst expectations of $17 million to $20 million, an unsurprising feat considering the industry’s historical inability to properly track films targeting black audiences.
All Eyez on Me is the bio-pic about Tupac Shakur, the Harlem-born hiphop hit maker who, in just 25 years of life, came to define a generation through his music, acting and poetry before that fateful 1996 drive-by shooting. Starring first-time actor Demetrius Shipp Jr., a doppelganger for the rapper, the film is titled after Tupac’s final album released before his death.
Jackson Storm (voice of Armie Hammer) and Lightning McQueen (voice of Owen Wilson) are among the characters in Cars 3. It came in first at last weekend’s box office and made about $53.7 million.
Landing in fourth place, after a disappointing debut last week, was Universal’s latest remake of The Mummy. It pulled in $14.5 million over the weekend for a domestic gross to date of $57 million.
Rounding out the top five was newcomer 47 Meters Down, a shark survival thriller, with $11.2 million. It beat analyst expectations that it would sink at the box office with about $5 million in ticket sales.
The movie, starring Mandy Moore and Claire Holt as vacationers in Mexico whose shark cage drops to the ocean floor, was released from Entertainment Studios to poor critical and audience reviews. Moviegoers gave it a C CinemaScore, and it has a 55 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
The only other major new release was Columbia’s Rough Night, an R-rated ensemble comedy about a group of friends from college who reunite in Miami for a bachelorette party, which goes into cover-up mode after they accidentally kill a male stripper. The $20 million romp, starring Scarlett Johansson and Kate McKinnon, came in at $8 million, good enough for only a seventh-place spot. The film likely won’t rebound in the coming weeks, having mustered only a C-plus CinemaScore from audiences and a 51 percent positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes.