Home Entertainment Weekend box office – The Lion King roars in cinemas with massive opening

Weekend box office – The Lion King roars in cinemas with massive opening

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“Everything the light touches is our Kingdom”. Never has this quote been more appropriate for Disney than this weekend past. The Marvel Studios panel utterly destroyed Comic-Con, Avengers: Endgame became the biggest film in history, and now Disney’s The Lion King live-action remake has gone and into cinemas with a massive $531 million worldwide opening.

Critics may have been divisive on the movie (well, not our critic), but audiences have been embracing the film with an “A” Cinemascore. In the US, The Lion King pulled in a huge $185 million, becoming the second-biggest opening of the year behind Endgame ($357.1 million) and beating out Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows ($169 million) for the biggest July domestic debut ever.

Meanwhile, its debut in most international markets netted it a $269 million take, with $21.5 million coming from China where the film had opened early last Friday and already earned $76 million before the weekend started. With half a billion dollars already in the bank after effectively 3 days, compared to Disney’s other live-action remake efforts, this stands head and shoulders above the rest.

And just to prove my point even further about Disney’s stellar 2019, The Lion King opening in 1st place pushes down Spider-Man: Far From Home and Toy Story 4 to a respective 2nd and 3rd place. Both of those are Disney movies as well. As for Far Far Home, the Spidey sequel is now on the cusp of earning $1 billion worldwide, while Toy Story 4 also broke past the $800 million mark to become the fifth-largest Disney-Pixar release ever.

Let’s see what the rest of the US box office looks like:

No.Movie Name Weekend gross Percentage change US Domestic gross Worldwide gross Last Week's Position
1The Lion King $185 million NE $185 million $531 million NE
2Spider-Man: Far From Home $21 million -53% $319.6 million $970.7 million 1st
3Toy Story 4 $14.6 million -30% $375.5 million $859.4 million 2nd
4Crawl $6 million -50% $23.8 million $33.7 million 3rd
5Yesterday $5.1 million -24% $57.5 million $98.1 million 5th
6Stuber $4 million -51% $16 million $18.9 million 4th
7Aladdin $3.8 million -38% $340 million $988.8 million 6th
8Annabelle Comes Home $2.6 million -52% $66.5 million $196.1 million 7th
9Midsommar $1.6 million -56% $22.4 million $22.4 million 8th
10The Secret Life of Pets 2 $1.5 million -52% $151.5 million $318.5 million 9th

NE = New Entry

Last Updated: July 22, 2019

5 Comments

  1. That is a lot of family-orientated movies in the top 10!

    Reply

    • Pariah

      July 22, 2019 at 13:20

      Annabelle is definitely one to take the kids to. Definitely. 😛

      Reply

  2. Magoo

    July 22, 2019 at 13:04

  3. Kapitan Balalaika

    July 22, 2019 at 13:13

    No 1 Billion dollar R-Rated movie?

    Reply

    • Kervyn Cloete

      July 22, 2019 at 15:06

      Biggest R-rated movie ever was Deadpool with $783 million.

      Reply

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