‘Beauty and the Beast’ set to shatter box office records

Disney’s Beauty and The Beast, the new live-action adaptation of the studio’s 1991 animated classic, is on its way to shattering box office records this week, raking in an estimated $63.8 million (Dh234.27 million) in over 4,200 theatres in the United States and Canada.

The PG-rated remake is projected to end the weekend on a $170-million-plus high note. This feat would make it the first $100-million opener of 2017 (beating out the $88-million opening of “Logan” as the year’s best so far), as well as the highest March opener ever, edging just past the $166 million grossed by Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice last year.

It would also shatter the $135-million record held by Finding Dory for the largest opening of a PG-rated movie. The film’s projected numbers would give it the No. 7 slot in the list of largest domestic openings in history, just behind Iron Man 3 ($174 million) and ahead of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 ($169 million).

Beauty and the Beast, about a young woman who falls for a beastly prince in an enchanted castle while trying to free her father from captivity, is proving a star-turning moment for Emma Watson, from the Harry Potter franchise. An A CinemaScore rating from audiences on opening night, as well as 71% “fresh” rating on Rotten Tomatoes, are only helping the cause.

Warner Bros.’ Vietnam-centred monster movie Kong: Skull Island landed in the No. 2 slot at the box office, adding an additional $7.3 million to its $88.6-million first-week take. Fox’s Logan earned third place with $4.7 million.

The weekend’s other two newcomers, Blumhouse BH Tilt’s The Belko Experiment and TriStar’s T2 sequel to Trainspotting, found themselves in sixth and 23rd place, respectively, with $1.5 million and $64,000.

The former, a bloody horror/thriller about Americans fighting for their lives in a high-rise office building in Bogota, Colombia, is probably suffering from negative reviews that have earned it a 48% fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. The latter, which catches up with the protagonists of the 1996 Danny Boyle-directed cult hit about heroin addicts, is so far only in limited release. It’s Friday numbers were from six locations.