New at BOP: Review: Matrix Resurrections Movie Review: Moonfall Movie Reviews: Scream The #1 Movie in America November Forecast The Many Saints of Newark October Forecast New Trivia Question All site updates Share & Save   Tweet Print this column

Rounding out the top five are Finding Dory and Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates. The latest Pixar release has staked a mighty claim as the number one release of the year. With another $11 million this weekend, a 47% drop, it’s now the most popular Pixar film ever with domestic box office of $445.5 million. Along the way, it’s also upended Shrek 2’s 12-year reign to become the most popular animated movie ever. It’s also currently the 11th biggest domestic performer ever, and it’ll move into eighth place by this time next week. It’s probably going to finish in seventh place all-time, a scintillating outcome for a sequel many observers felt came a decade too late.

As for Mike and Dave, the honeymoon’s not quite over, but they’re sobering up fast. A $7.5 million weekend gives the movie 10 days of box office totaling $31.3 million. For a $33 million production, that’s a solid total, but the 55% drop indicates that audiences have already done their walk of shame with Mike and Dave. Now, they’re ready to shower and move on with their lives. Still, the writers of this article want to emphasize that every movie on the planet would be better if it featured any or all of Adam DeVine, Zac Efron, Anna Kendrick, Aubrey Plaza, or Sam Richardson. Mike and Dave won with the casting and deserved a better box office fate.

Sixth place goes to The Purge: Election Year, and even though it’s down another 51%, the horror/thriller has accomplished everything it needs to already. A weekend take of $6.1 million brings its overall domestic total to $71 million, which is almost enough to match the film’s overseas revenue of $78 million. Considering the $10 million budget, Universal has to be extraordinarily thrilled with the way things have gone here.

Central Intelligence once again has the best hold of any film in the top 12. The comedy from Kevin Hart and Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson earned another $5.3 million, down just 34% from the previous frame. It has quietly become one of the best earners of the year, as its domestic tally has now reached $117.5 million. Overseas audiences have added another $63 million to the coffers. Central Intelligence carried a $50 million production budget, so it’s definitely fair to call this Warner Bros. effort a success.

Closing out the top ten are a new release and a pair of box office duds. The Infiltrator stars Breaking Bad’s Bryan Cranston as the real life federal agent who went undercover to take down notorious drug kingpin Pablo Escobar. It’s the latest release from Broad Green Pictures, a relatively new distributor, and it struggled to earn venues or consumer support. Playing in only 1,601 locations, it earned a modest $5.3 million, a mediocre per-venue average of $3,302. Including its Wednesday and Thursday revenue, The Infiltrator grossed $6.7 million in five days. Sure, that’s not a great total but for an upstart studio, it’s not bad.

Ninth and tenth place go to the duds. Steven Spielberg’s The BFG, a reunion of the director and his Academy Award-winning actor, Mark Rylance, fell another 52% to $3.7 million this weekend. After three frames, its box office is $47.3 million, which would be fine if the film hadn’t cost $140 million to produce. Suffice to say that it’s going to go down as one of the worst box office failures of the year. Independence Day: Resurgence is in similar decline. Its fourth weekend drop of 56% means that this is its final stand in the top ten. Another $3.5 million brings its domestic tally to $98.5 million after 24 days in release. It’s brutal to do this comparison, but the original Independence Day had already crossed $200 million by this point. With a production budget of $165 million and overseas revenue approaching $200 million, this project isn’t a disaster. It does, however, border on a least case scenario result for Fox, though.

Woody Allen’s latest directorial effort, Café Society, debuted on just five screens with a terrific $355,000, which comes to $71,000 per location. The well-reviewed film with such featured performers as Steve Carell, Blake Lively, Jesse Eisenberg and Kristen Stewart, should see a platform rollout in the coming weeks.

This year’s top 12 lags well behind the same weekend last year, when new releases Ant-Man and Trainwreck combined for more than $87 million. The top 12 for 2016 earned $154.1, while 2015’s set of films tallied $183.4 million. Next weekend offers a chance to push ahead, as Star Trek Beyond, Ice Age: Collision Course and the latest horror production from James Wan, Lights Out, will be newly released. There’s some question as to whether audiences are dying for another Ice Age or Star Trek, and we’ll see if they continue the 2016 story of sequel underperformance.

Top Ten for Weekend of July 15-17, 2016
Rank	Film	Distributor	Estimated Gross (millions)	Weekly Change	Running Total (millions)
1	The Secret Life of Pets	Universal	50.6	-52%	203.1
2	Ghostbusters	Sony	46.0	New	46.0
3	The Legend of Tarzan	Warner Bros.	11.2	-47%	103.1
4	Finding Dory	Walt Disney	11.0	-47%	445.5
5	Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates	20th Century Fox	7.5	-55%	31.3
6	The Purge: Election Year	Universal	6.1	-51%	71.0
7	Central Intelligence	Warner Bros.	5.3	-34%	117.5
8	The Infiltrator	Broad Green Pictures	5.3	New	6.7
9	The BFG	Walt Disney	3.7	-52%	47.3
10	Independence Day: Resurgence	20th Century Fox	3.5	-56%	98.5
11	The Shallows	Sony	3.0	-38%	51.4
12	Sultan	Yash Raj	1.0	-59%	5.3

Continued:       1       2       3