Beauty is a beast at the box office

Lumiere the candelabra is smitten with Plumette the feather duster in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It came in first at last weekend’s box office and made about $175 million.
Lumiere the candelabra is smitten with Plumette the feather duster in Disney’s Beauty and the Beast. It came in first at last weekend’s box office and made about $175 million.

LOS ANGELES -- Disney's Beauty and the Beast brought so many guests to movie theaters over last weekend that the live-action remake became the biggest box-office opener of 2017 so far, and the seventh-best debut of all time.

The film brought in an impressive $175 million, well above analyst expectations of $150 million. The picture also brought in $180 million internationally.

"It's incredible. It's amazing," said Dave Hollis, the studio's distribution chief. "There are almost no words to fully capture how gratifying it is to see a result like this from a team that has been working on telling stories like this for years."

The picture, which cost $160 million to make, stars Emma Watson of the Harry Potter franchise as Belle and Dan Stevens (Downton Abbey, Legion) as the cursed prince. The story stays fairly close to the beloved 1991 animated original, a box-office smash that became the first animated movie to earn a best picture Oscar nomination. Directed by Bill Condon, known for The Twilight Saga and the musical Dreamgirls, the new film is well on its way to following in its predecessor's history-making footsteps.

Disney's dusting off the oldies can be tough, but technology has become so advanced that live-action versions can do the originals justice in the eyes of some filmgoers and critics.

Such technology has helped catapult Beauty into Imax history books. The film got $21 million of its worldwide gross from Imax, a record for a PG-rated movie, surpassing Jungle Book's $20 million.

The picture has all the makings of a hit that will continue to dominate the box office in the weeks to come. With the recent success of La La Land (more than $417 million in worldwide sales), it proves that escapist song-and-dance fantasy still sells, even in countries that haven't traditionally responded to the format.

Landing in second place in its second week was Warner Bros.' Kong: Skull Island with $28 million. The film has pulled in $109 million to date. Fox's Logan took third place in its third week. The latest in the X-Men franchise added about $18 million, for a domestic gross of $184 million.

The Jordan Peele-written-and-directed film Get Out, from Universal and Blumhouse Productions, pulled in $13.4 million in its fourth week, for a fourth-place finish. The social thriller has brought in more than $133 million in the United States alone. It began its international release last week, grossing $2.9 million from nine territories, including the United Kingdom.

In fifth place is Lionsgate's The Shack, with $6 million, for a total of $42.5 million in sales in its third week.

The only other significant new release was BH Tilt's The Belko Experiment, about 80 Americans forced into a violent social experiment in a corporate tower in Colombia. The horror film, which cost less than $5 million to make, grossed $4.1 million. It stars Tony Goldwyn, Michael Rooker and John McGinley and was directed by Greg McLean.

In limited release, Columbia's T2: Trainspotting opened with $180,000 from five locations, a per theater average of $36,000. The sequel to 1996's Trainspotting, with a return in cast and Danny Boyle as director, has already succeeded in England, with $21 million, and has thus far taken in $34 million internationally.

This week's options increase with the debuts of Warner Bros.' CHiPs, Columbia's Life, Lionsgate's Power Rangers and River Rain's Slamma Jamma.

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

The top 20 movies at U.S. and Canadian theaters Friday through Sunday, followed by distribution studio, gross, number of theater locations, average receipts per location, total gross and number of weeks in release, as compiled Monday by comScore:

  1. Beauty and the Beast, Disney, $174,750,616, 4,210 locations, $41,508 average, $174,750,616, one week.

  2. Kong: Skull Island, Warner Bros., $27,832,142, 3,846 locations, $7,237 average, $109,107,436, two weeks.

  3. Logan, 20th Century Fox, $17,815,677, 3,687 locations, $4,832 average, $184,342,562, three weeks.

  4. Get Out, Universal, $13,437,220, 2,979 locations, $4,511 average, $133,305,365, four weeks.

  5. The Shack, Lionsgate, $6,005,739, 2,825 locations, $2,126 average, $42,490,369, three weeks.

  6. The LEGO Batman Movie, Warner Bros., $4,602,235, 2,735 locations, $1,683 average, $167,325,587, six weeks.

  7. The Belko Experiment, OTL Releasing, $4,137,230, 1,341 locations, $3,085 average, $4,137,230, one week.

  8. Hidden Figures, 20th Century Fox, $1,475,280, 1,162 locations, $1,270 average, $165,534,349, 13 weeks.

  9. John Wick: Chapter Two, Lionsgate, $1,183,506, 1,065 locations, $1,111 average, $89,774,310, six weeks.

  10. Before I Fall, Open Road, $985,631, 1,551 locations, $635 average, $11,246,308, three weeks.

  11. Lion, The Weinstein Co., $734,336, 621 locations, $1,183 average, $50,000,950, 17 weeks.

  12. La La Land, Lionsgate, $531,568, 585 locations, $909 average, $149,765,752, 15 weeks.

  13. Split, Universal, $505,540, 604 locations, $837 average, $136,864,765, nine weeks.

  14. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, Disney, $502,905, 179 locations, $2,810 average, $530,748,437, 14 weeks.

  15. The Sense of an Ending, CBS Films, $480,406, 281 locations, $1,710 average, $533,003, two weeks.

  16. A Dog's Purpose, Universal, $477,890, 594 locations, $805 average, $62,932,920, eight weeks.

  17. Fist Fight, Warner Bros., $460,166, 533 locations, $863 average, $31,537,914, five weeks.

  18. Fifty Shades Darker, Universal, $453,590, 607 locations, $747 average, $114,030,075, six weeks.

  19. Badrinath Ki Dulhania, Fox International Productions, $418,202, 156 locations, $2,681 average, $1,584,711, two weeks.

  20. Moana, Disney, $342,833, 264 locations, $1,299 average, $248,044,531, 17 weeks.

MovieStyle on 03/24/2017

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