Animation Derivative Takes a Dive

Men with capes = box office gold!

The weekend box office results are in, and for last week's #1, the totals are not pretty...

Three Days of Grosses

1) Shazam! -- 4,217 -- $53.4M -- $56.7M (1st weekend)

2) Pet Sematary -- 3,585 -- $25M -- $25M (1st weekend)

3) Dumbo -- 4,259 -- $18.2M (-60%) -- $76.2M

4) Us -- 3,512 (-231) -- $13.8M (-58%) -- $152.3M

5) Captain Marvel -- 3,573 (-412) -- $12.6M (-39%) -- $374.1M

6) Best Of Enemies -- 1,705 -- $4.5M -- $4.5M (1st weekend)

7) Five Feet Apart -- 2,484 (-361) -- $3.7M (-40%) -- $41.5M

8) Unplanned -- 1,516 (+457) -- $3.2M (-50%) -- $12.4M

9) Wonder Park -- 2,281 (-1,023) -- $2M (-59%) -- $41.9M

10) How To Train Ur Dragon 3 -- 1,928 (-857) -- $1.98M (-55%) -- $156.7M

For animation reboots like Dumbo, and original animated features like Wonder Park, it was not the weekend was not the best of three-day experiences.

The little elephant fell 60%, the biggest tumble of any feature in the Top Ten, and it didn't open like gang-busters to begin with. (Part of Dumbo's problem is it was an expensive picture to produce and heavy with CG animated characters and effects. Unfortunately there are no superheroes in the plot-line so the turnstiles haven't been spinning at a sufficient rate of speed to push this circus movie into the black.)

Meantime, the Paramount cartoon Wonder Park dropped 59%, and now has a total of $41.9 million in the till after a month on domestic screens. Not good.

Even How To Train Your Dragon 3, which has done solid business over the past seven weeks, has racked up good but not great grosses. Happily, Dragon has produced big numbers overseas and has a worldwide total of $508,092,245 against a budget of $129 million.

The high flyers on the current Big List are movies with characters wearing spandex and bright-colored capes.