Moviegoers hear ‘Call of the Wild’
The domestic box office was a race between two computer-generated creatures over the weekend, as “Sonic the Hedgehog” and “The Call of the Wild” jockeyed for first place.
Paramount Pictures’ “Hedgehog,” an actioncomedy with a blue, furcovered digital protagonist, had an impressive opening last weekend, and it was expected to hold its lead. While the movie did top the box office this weekend — with an estimated $26.3 million in domestic sales Friday through Sunday — it was a closer contest than expected.
That was thanks to a surprisingly good showing from the second-place movie, “The Call of the Wild,” an adaptation of the Jack London novel that pairs a scruffy Harrison Ford with a digital Bernard-Scotch shepherd mix.
Distributed by 20th Century Studios, the film opened to an estimated $24.8 million in domestic sales over the weekend. That figure is above expectations (prerelease projections had placed it in the teens), though because of the movie’s reported $135 million budget, it has a long way to go to be profitable.
“The Call of the Wild,” directed by Chris Sanders, has a recognizable leading man in Ford, who plays the novel’s central human, a rugged outdoorsman. But like the novel, the movie is primarily the story of Buck, a California house dog that finds its way into the wild.
In third was “Birds of Prey” (Warner Bros.), a DC Comics superhero movie in its third weekend. It sold an estimated $7 million in tickets, according to comScore, which compiles box office data.
The only newcomer in the top five other than “The Call of the Wild” was “Brahms: The Boy II,” a poorly reviewed horror sequel distributed by STX. Its weak opening brought in an estimated $5.9 million in domestic sales, placing the movie in competition with Sony’s “Bad Boys for Life,” which is comparatively ancient (this was its sixth weekend in theaters) but also managed around $5.9 million.
Final counts today will determine which landed in fourth and which placed fifth.