Disney’s Beauty and the Beast has dominated a second week atop the box office, setting a record for the highest 2nd weekend ever in March in the process. The tale as old as time earned another $88.3M (revised) over the weekend in the US and Canada. It’s also the fourth second best weekend ever. That brings its domestic total to $319M.
Internationally, the film opened up new markets with $119M over the weekend and is on the way to closing north of $373M over the weekend. That brings the overall global total to $690M. More than 2/3rds of the way to $1B.
The movie has been aided at the box office by fans of Harry Potter coming to see its leading lady Emma Watson. There’s also the legions of parents who are bringing their kids to see the remake of the original animated film they fell in love with. It had a really strong week thanks to many parts of the US being on spring break.
Disney’s off to another amazing start in 2017. It will take another strong week, more new countries, and a third strong weekend, but Beauty and the Beast could be the House of Mouse’s first billion dollar film as they company attempts to beat it’s all-time box office record of more than $7B last year.
Update: If “Beauty and the Beast” follows the patterns of other top grossing G- and PG-rated films, it will earn approximately 50-54% of its domestic ticket revenue in the first two weeks. That puts it on a course of $600 million, give or take, before it moves to streaming and DVD.
Once it reaches $600M, “Beauty” will be the most successful G- or PG-rated film in decades, even better than Frozen. Still when you adjust for inflation, it won’t top the original “The Lion King” (Disney is currently working on a live-action remake) or Walt Disney classics like “101 Dalmatians” and “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.”
Since Disney’s most recent films have been cleaning up globally and domestically, I would now say it’s safe to put “Beauty and the Beast” on a trajectory of $1.2B give or take. Really depends on what people’s appetite for “The Boss Baby” from Dreamworks is.