Home Entertainment Local weekend box office – Lion King keeps roaring as newcomers flop

Local weekend box office – Lion King keeps roaring as newcomers flop

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Last week not even the combined badass powers of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham could dethrone The Lion King, when I looked at the new releases for this weekend past, I held out little hope. And, unfortunately for them, everything played out exactly as I expected it would as Disney’s The Lion King remake held onto the crown for the fourth-week running easily, barely dropping a percent. That pushes its current total at the South African box office to a very impressive R86.4 million. Meanwhile, Fast & Furious spinoff Hobbs & Shaw retained its runner-up spot, as Spider-Man: Far From Home stayed put in third place as well.

That means we have to go all the way down to fourth place to find the first of the newcomers in dog drama The Art of Racing in the Rain. The film has also flopped in the US, so this lacklustre debut is no surprise. On the flip side though, Scary Story Stories in the Dark actually surprised with its performance in the US this weekend past, but locally it barely made a blip as it opened in fifth place. To be fair though, just like what almost always happens with horror movies locally, Scary Stories got a limited release, debuting in just 42 cinemas.

As for the final newcomer, Her Only Choice, it didn’t even make it into the top 10 as all the other holdovers from last week pretty much kept to the same order again.

Let’s see what the rest of the SA chart looks like:

No.Movie Name Weekend gross Percentage change Local gross Last Week's Position
1The Lion King R12.7 million -1% R86.4 million 1st
2Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw R7.2 million -35% R21.8 million 2nd
3Spider-Man: Far From Home R1 million -8% R32.3 million 3rd
4The Art of Racing in the Rain R528 440 NE R528 440 NE
5Scary Stories To Tell in the Dark R489 347 NE R489 347 NE
6The Secret Life of Pets 2 R441 574 -2% R15.8 million 4th
7Toy Story 4 R387 075 +1% R22.7 million 5th
8Crawl R309 163 -18% R1.7 million 6th
9Aladdin R301 811 -11% R42.7 million 7th
10Terra Willy R262 108 -9% R614 437 NE

NE = New Entry

Last Updated: August 20, 2019

3 Comments

  1. Is it just me or is that list filled with wholesome movies that you can take your family to watch!

    Terra Willy is a strange entry though. Googling brings up a French animated movie that is from a studio that, at least to me, is not well-known!

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      August 13, 2019 at 15:44

      Don’t worry, I also had to do some deep Googling (Page 2 of results! Gasp! Horror!) to find anything on that movie. It’s completely obscure. The local distributor for it is Black Sheep Productions, and they’ve brought in a few of these French animated features before.

      Reply

      • G8crasha

        August 13, 2019 at 15:54

        I get the feeling this was one of those situations where the parents did not have a say on what movie to watch. Their kid just saw something that looked cool, and now they have to go watch it.

        Reply

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