Weekend box office: Independence Day can’t beat Finding Dory

Brad Sturdivant June 26th, 2016

Many people wondered whether or not a sequel to disaster film 20 years later could succeed at the weekend box office and it looks like we got our answer. Although to be fair, the original INDEPENDENCE DAY grossed about $50 million in 1996 while the sequel looks like it’s going to pull in about $45 million. If you ignore inflation, that’s not too far of a drop off. The telling sign that Fox was losing faith was when they decided not to screen the film for critics. That was probably a good move since most critics seemingly hated it. The other new film of the weekend was the Blake Lively starring THE SHALLOWS, which did pretty well given the competition and timing. The shark film did well enough to land in fourth place, just ahead of Matthew McConaughey’s FREE STATE OF JONES (click the link to read our review). But as expected, Disney’s FINDING DORY held on to the top spot with a nice $75 million in its second weekend.

Next week features the release of Steven Spielberg’s THE BFG. Although I’ll follow Spielberg anywhere, there’s nothing about this film that I find interesting. We also get the horror sequel, THE PURGE: ELECTION YEAR, which might do well but it probably would have done better with a late August release. Finally, we have THE LEGEND OF TARZAN which has gotten a lot of marketing, but I don’t think that’s going to help it much. The new movies have some question marks around them, but I think FINDING DORY makes it three in a row. I hate to bet against Spielberg, but I’m just not sold on THE BFG. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.

1. Finding Dory $74.5m

2. Independence Day: Resurgence $45m

3. Central Intelligence $18.2m

4. The Shallows $16.8m

5. Free State of Jones $7.7m

6. The Conjuring 2 $7.2m

7. Now You See Me 2 $5.3m

8. X-Men: Apocalypse $2.6m

9. Warcraft $2.3m

10. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows $2.2m

(Deadline)