Weekend Box Office: ‘Ghostbusters’ Does Well, But Can’t Overtake ‘The Secret Life Of Pets’

This is one of the weekend box office totals that many have been waiting for, and it didn’t turn out quite like many skeptics thought it would. Ghostbusters has gotten so much negativity coming its way, but it still had an impressive opening weekend, even though it wasn’t able to overtake last week’s winner in The Secret Life of Pets.

The estimates are now out for the weekend, and Box Office Mojo has shown that The Secret Life of Pets moved ahead of Ghostbusters for first place. The animated film’s second weekend brought in an impressive $50.56 million, for a total gross of $203 million domestically in a mere two weeks.

Ghostbusters was in first place after its Friday opening, but it did drop into second place for the full three days with an estimated $46 million. USA Today is reporting that Ghostbusters had power throughout the weekend, but Saturday is a big day at theaters for families, and it caused the animated hit to make the jump.

The Legend of Tarzan continues to impress as it jumped another animated hit in Finding Dory to land in third place with $11.1 million. That has made the unexpected long-lasting hit soar over $100 million domestically, and it doesn’t seem like it is ready to give it up yet.

The same can be said for Disney-Pixar’s Finding Dory, which has now almost reached $450 million at the domestic box office while pulling in more than $721 million worldwide. That is incredibly impressive for a sequel that has now been in release for a month.

There was only one other wide opening release this weekend, and it was the star-studded The Infiltrator, which brought about a lot of fight, literally. The New York Daily News is reporting that stars Bryan Cranston and John Leguizamo actually go into a physical brawl on the set and had to be pulled apart as Leguizamo recalled.

“It’s a scene where I go to the cartel with the informant and the informant tells them that I’m a cop. He rats me out. And I have to lie my way out of it. And I tell them that he’s a liar. And instead of shooting me, they shoot him, but the actor and I started getting into the scene too much, and started hitting each other. And pretty soon, we were fighting for real.”

Estimated numbers for the weekend box office of July 15-17, 2016 are as follows.

1. The Secret Life of Pets – $50.56 million
2. Ghostbusters – $46.0 million
3. The Legend of Tarzan – $11.1 million
4. Finding Dory – $11.0 million
5. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates – $7.5 million
6. The Purge: Election Year – $6.08 million
7. Central Intelligence – $5.3 million
8. The Infiltrator – $5.287 million
9. The BFG – $3.74 million
10. Independence Day: Resurgence – $3.0 million

20th Century Fox can’t help but look at Independence Day: Resurgence as a disappointment, even though it has now almost doubled its budget. While it has made $314 million worldwide, it was set to be a huge summer blockbuster and has brought in less than $100 million domestically after almost a month.

Full numbers will be out on Monday for this weekend’s box office as far as the domestic totals are concerned. These numbers are just an estimate, but they aren’t expected to vary much from the current list.

The Secret Life of Pets is doing phenomenally and it is going to keep making money for weeks as this appears to be the summer of animation dominance with Finding Dory along for the ride. Ghostbusters starting out with an estimated $46 million isn’t great when looking at its budget, but Paul Feig’s films have a weird habit of earning more as they are released longer. The weekend box office may not be impressive all around, but no-one can find much fault with the new paranormal hunters.

[Image via Sony Pictures]