The Weekend Report

The Secret Life of Pets bow wowed to an estimated $103.1 million to easily take the weekend crown. Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates opened fourth to $16.6 million.

Exclusive freshman included encouraging starts for the Japanese warmedy Our Little Sister and the doc Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You with, respectively, $25,700 from three screens and $19,100 at two sites. Most impressive was Captain Fantastic with $97,600 from four communes. The session’s two major expansions, New Zealand family adventure Hunt for the Wilderpeople and French drama The Innocents both clicked in wider release.

Activity in the niches was torrid with the Hindi Sultan opening with the year’s biggest gross for an Indian production with $2.4 million. There was also a solid bow of $107,000 for the Kannada film Godhi Banna Sadharana Mykattu at 31 venues. The latest Filipino rom-com The Achy Breaky Hearts had an excellent start of $213,000 with Chinese Cold War 2 strong at $160,000.

Revenues for the three days climbed to roughly $215 million for a 12% boost from last weekend. It was a slim 1% decline from 2015 when Minions debuted with $115.7 million and Jurassic World slipped into second with $18.2 million.

Expectations were high for The Secret Life of Pets with tracking suggesting an $80 million to $85 million launch. It was an understandable lowball as the animated film was not an established franchise. Its box office establishes it as the largest opening for an original animated feature. A studio spokesman said the universal appeal of four-legged friends proved a stronger magnet than anticipated.

Pets were unleashed two weeks ago in a handful of international markets and entered the current weekend with an overseas gross of $34 million. This weekend it debuted in India and its $490,000 box office contributed to a $7.8 million foreign gross. Studio exit polls identified the domestic audience as 64% female with 51% aged 25-years and older. Families accounted for 54% of ticket sales.

Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates was perceived as a modest counter-programmer with high end expectations of $15 million that it exceeded. It’s still premature to dub the modestly budgeted comedy as a sleeper but that potential exists. Its audience skewed slightly female at 52% with an even split for the over/under 25-year olds.

Mike and Dave also dipped into 19 international markets for a $3.7 million tally. Major territories included $1.9 million in Australia and $660,000 in Russia.

Finding Dory became the top-grossing 2015 release on Friday, when the domestic box surged past $6 billion. The current domestic box office is running at a 4% faster pace than 2015.

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