Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation has checked into the No 1 spot at the box office in its opening weekend and left the Dwayne Johnson action thriller, Skyscraper, in the dust.
Sony Pictures estimated on Sunday that the animated family movie earned $44.1 million (Dh161.9 million) from North American theatres. As the first in the franchise to open in the summer, it’s just slightly under the previous instalment’s $48.5 million debut in September 2015.
Worldwide, Hotel Transylvania 3 has already earned more than $100 million.
“It’s really terrific,” said Adrian Smith, Sony’s head of North American distribution. “We’re positioned to take advantage of the valuable summer weekdays and there are six weeks of summer left.”
The successful series has grossed over $900 million worldwide to date.
Going into the weekend, experts expected a three-way race to the top between Hotel Transylvania 3, Skyscraper and Ant-Man and the Wasp, but the family film won by a large margin.
“There haven’t been a lot of options for families this summer,” said comScore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “They become instant hits.”
Johnson’s Skyscraper, a rare original summer blockbuster, remained earthbound in its first weekend in North America. The Universal Pictures film brought in only $25.5 million in North America. Skyscraper cost a reported $125 million to produce, not accounting for marketing costs.
Johnson has been a consistent presence in movie theatres this year with both Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle and Rampage prior to Skyscraper. Both previous films opened in the $35 million range, and while Jumanji went on to be a worldwide box office juggernaut, Rampage petered out in North America with just under $100 million. As with Rampage, however, the studio is expecting the majority of Skyscraper profits to come from international audiences.
“Skyscraper is really engineered for a global release and it got a terrific start,” said Jim Orr, Universal’s president of North American distribution. “We have great faith in a more than terrific run at the domestic box office going forward.”
Internationally, Skyscraper grossed $40.4 million from 57 territories for a global total of $65.9 million.
Second place went to Disney and Marvel’s Ant-Man and the Wasp, which brought in an additional $28.8 million in its second weekend, down 62 per cent from last week. It’s one of the steeper second week falls in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The first Ant-Man fell 53 per cent.
Incredibles 2 took fourth place with $16.2 million and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom rounded out the top five with $15.5 million.
