by Brad Brevet
Wonder Woman exceeded all expectations this weekend, delivering an impressive $100 million opening, the largest opening for a female-directed feature, vastly out-performing the previous record holder Fifty Shades of Grey, which debuted with $85.1 million back in 2015. Meanwhile, Fox's release of the DreamWorks Animation feature Captain Underpants came up a little short of Mojo's forecast while mildly outperforming the studio's modest expectations. Overall, the weekend dramatically outperformed the post-holiday weekend from 2016 by a massive 38% as the top twelve delivered a combined $176 million.
At the top, Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins and starring Gal Gadot in the title role, went into the weekend boasting the best reviews out of the four films that have been released in the DC Extended Universe so far and the critical opinion definitely aided the film's awareness as the buzz only continued to grow throughout the week. Following an impressive $38.76 million Friday that buzz was no longer due to critics as audiences gave the film an "A" CinemaScore, pushing the film over $100 million for its opening weekend, the first female directed feature to achieve such an opening. And as far as female-led comic book adaptations are concerned, it's by far the largest opening as the second closest is Paramount's Ghost in the Shell, which debuted with $18.6 million earlier this year.
In fact, Wonder Woman delivered the 16th largest opening weekend for a comic book adaptation all-time. It's the sixth largest opening among that group if you don't count sequels and, based on estimates, the sixth largest June opening all-time. Looking ahead, given the strong word of mouth, it would be no shock to see it deliver $300 million domestically or at least very close to that figure.
Beyond the CinemaScore, the film played to an audience that was 52% female vs. 48% male, 14% of the audience was under the age of 18 and 47% was over the age of 35.
Internationally, the performance was equally strong, as Wonder Woman brought in an estimated $122.5 million from 55 markets, which includes a $38 million debut in China, bettering the openings for the likes of Man of Steel, Thor, The Avengers and Guardians of the Galaxy. Additional openings include the UK ($7.5m), Mexico ($8.4m), South Korea ($8.5m), Brazil ($8.3m), Australia ($4.9m), Russia ($4.8m) and Indonesia ($4.7m). Still to come are openings in France next week, Germany on June 15, Spain on June 23 and the film opens in Japan in August.
In second, Fox's release of DreamWorks Animation's Captain Underpants delivered a bit of a ho-hum opening with an estimated $23.5 million. While enough for a second place finish it's one of the smallest opening weekends for a DreamWorks Animated title, in fact it ranks 26th among 35 total films. Fortunately, the studio made the film for a fraction of what it cost to make previous DWA titles, such as Rise of the Guardians, which was made for $145 million and only opened to $23.7 million before just barely topping $103.4 million domestically. So, should Captain Underpants holdover well things might not look so dissatisfying, but with Cars 3 and Despicable Me 3 just around the corner it's going to need to hustle.
Captain Underpants received a "B+" CinemaScore from opening day audiences and played to an overall audience that was 54% male vs. 46% female, of which 65% where under the age of 25 and of the younger audience, 60% were boys and 91% of the audience ranged from the ages of 7-12.
Internationally, Captain Underpants debuted in just eight markets where it brought in an estimated $740k led by a nearly $300k debut in Portugal.
Moving along, Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales appears to be sinking fast domestically as it dropped 65.7% in its second weekend, bringing in an estimated $21.6 million. The film's domestic cume now stands at $114.6 million. Internationally things look a bit brighter as it brought in another $73.8 million pushing its global cume over $500 million after 12 days in global release with the film still yet to open in Japan.
Disney also claimed the fourth spot this weekend with Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, which delivered an estimated $9.7 million as its domestic cume now climbs over $355 million. Internationally it added another $4.4 million as its global gross now stands at $816.6 million, making it the fifth highest grossing worldwide release among the films in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.
Rounding out the top five is Paramount's Baywatch, which dipped 54.1% in its second weekend for a domestic cume of $41.7 million. The film did roll-out to 31 international markets this weekend where it brought in $23.8 million including openings in the UK ($5.8m), Germany ($3.9m), Australia ($2.7m), Russia ($1.8m), India ($1.6m), Italy ($729k) and Hong Kong ($701k). The film's global cume now stands over $67 million with openings in Brazil, Mexico, Spain and France coming in the next few weeks.
Elsewhere, in moderate release Lionsgate released Pantelion's 3 Idiotas into 349 theaters where it grossed an estimated $600k and Cohen Media's release of Churchill starring Brian Cox opened with $426k from 215 theaters.
In limited release CBS Films' Dean brought in an estimated $60,366 from 15 theaters ($4,024 PTA); IFC's Band Aid brought in an estimated $31,500 from three theaters ($10,500 PTA); China Lion released Beautiful Accident into 15 theaters where it grossed an estimated $25,000 ($1,667 PTA); A24's The Exception debuted in just two locations with an estimated $23,337 ($11,669 PTA); Vitagraph's Letters from Baghdad debuted with $18,250 from two locations ($9,125 PTA); Samuel Goldwyn's Past Life brought in an estimated $16,215 from four locations ($4,054 PTA); and finally, Matson's Radio Dreams opened in one location with an estimated $2,053.
Next weekend Universal will kick off their Dark Universe with The Mummy starring Tom Cruise and Sofia Boutella in 4,000 theaters while Bleecker Street releases Megan Leavey starring Rooney Mara; A24 will debut the horror feature It Comes at Night; and Fox Searchlight will release My Cousin Rachel into ~500 theaters.
You can check out all of this weekend's estimated results right here and we'll be updating our charts with weekend actuals on Monday afternoon.
Discuss this story with fellow Box Office Mojo fans on Facebook. On Twitter, follow us at @boxofficemojo and author Brad Brevet at @bradbrevet.
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