Finding Dory Beating Independence Day: Resurgence At Box Office

Finding Dory is expected to earn almost $75 million in its second weekend, putting a damper on [...]

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Finding Dory is expected to earn almost $75 million in its second weekend, putting a damper on Fox's hopes to make Independence Day: Resurgence the top movie in the country.

Resurgence, which cost more than $150 million to make and is a sequel twenty years in the making, is looking at an opening weekend of around $41-44 million this weekend.

The original Independence Day, which went on to gross over $300 million at the domestic box office, opened with $50 million. That said, this year almost every major motion picture has been very front-loaded...and Resurgence has a B CinemaScore, the same score that Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice had -- and that movie had a huge dropoff from its first to second week.

Last week, Finding Dory not only managed to out-draw Finding Nemo in its first week at the domestic box office, but to break the all-time record for the biggest opening by an animated movie.

Finding Dory earned an estimated $136,183,170 last weekend, more than $100 million more than Central Intelligence, the second-highest-grossing movie of the week, making this weekend's likely dropoff less than 50%.

The film, almost universally beloved by critics, is well on the way to being one of the year's top-grossing films.

Finding Nemo director Andrew Stanton, who returns for the sequel, is likely breathing a sigh of relief at these numbers; his last job as a director was John Carter, which lost Disney around $200 million in spite of building a pretty solid following among audiences who saw it.

Currently, Disney holds three of the year's top five spots at the domestic box office with Civil War, Zootopia, and The Jungle Book. They've also got a stake in Fox's Deadpool, since that's a Marvel property. If Finding Dory ousts Batman V Superman from the top spot before something else creeps in, Disney could potentially have a financial stake in all five of the year's top films.

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