'Captain America: Civil War' conquers box office again with $72.6M
The A-list money team-up of George Clooney and Julia Roberts couldn't foil the monster duo of Captain America and Iron Man.
The superhero blockbuster Captain America: Civil War conquered all at the box office for a second weekend in a row, pulling in $72.6 million and running its domestic total to $295.9 million.
Globally, Civil War zoomed past $940 million, making it the third consecutive Disney release this year (after Zootopia and The Jungle Book) to surpass $800 million. It also helped the Marvel Cinematic Universe to reach a combined $10 billion in eight years from 13 movies.
The latest Marvel movie's second-weekend drop of 59% is in line with last summer's Avengers: Age of Ultron, though a little surprising given the critical acclaim for Civil War, says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for tracking service comScore. "I figured more people would figure out it’s an Avengers movie. Some people are just really into the whole notion of Avengers, and if they just look at the title Captain America, that may not be as big of a draw."
But "it should continue to play very, very well," he adds. "As word of mouth continues to build, it’ll just sustain itself in the marketplace."
The Jungle Book held tightly to second place, where it also finished last week, with $17.8 million.
Money Monster, Jodie Foster's financial hostage thriller with Clooney and Roberts, made its debut with $15 million — good enough for third place. Reviews were mixed (it has a 56% approval rating from critics on aggregate site RottenTomatoes.com), though audiences gave it a B-plus on CinemaScore.
The movie overshot expectations of an opening in the low teens, Dergarabedian says. "That’s a good number for that movie. It was counterprogramming to the big Marvel extravaganza."
The Darkness, starring Kevin Bacon as a dad dealing with the supernatural, was a true horror show, as it could only muster a $5.2 million opening and fourth-place finish. Not helping its case: a dreaded goose egg on Rotten Tomatoes and a C on CinemaScore.
Roberts' other movie in theaters, Garry Marshall's ensemble comedy Mother's Day, rounded out the top five with $3.3 million.
The Lobster, a quirky fantasy with Colin Farrell, had the best indie debut thus far in 2016. It racked up $188,000 on four screens for an impressive per-screen average of $47,000. That's an "amazing" first weekend, Dergarabedian says. "It’s not a Marvel movie, it’s not a sequel. Sometimes even early in the season, you need an antidote to summer movies, and people responded heavily to that film."
Also noteworthy among arthouse releases was the opening of the Jane Austen adaptation Love & Friendship, with Kate Beckinsale and Chloë Sevigny. It grossed $133,000 with an average of $33,000 on its four screens.
With high-profile fare such as The Nice Guys, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising and The Angry Birds Movie hitting theaters Friday, and sequels X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through the Looking Glass arriving Memorial Day weekend, Dergarabedian notes that "it’s going to be a really solid May overall."
Final figures are expected Monday.