Jacob Hall

The 2016 summer box office hit another speed bump this week as two major releases — a sequel and a potential franchise-starter — opened to disappointing numbers. However, it wasn’t all doom and gloom. Despite the poor starts for Warcraft and Now You See Me 2, The Conjuring 2 opened at number one with the kind of debut that proves modestly budgeted horror movies with R ratings still have a place in the blockbuster months.

This may have been one of the weakest weekends at the box office this summer, with audiences seemingly avoiding movies new and old like the plague. Even the victories feel a little half-hearted, with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows taking number one at the box office while not even coming close to matching the business of the first film. With Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping simply bombing, the only new release to show promise was Me Before You.

Despite the arrival of two major films, this Memorial Day weekend was ultimately a disappointing affair, as X-Men: Apocalypse and Alice Through the Looking Glass both underperformed. The former should ultimately emerge untarnished in the long run, likely making enough money to keep the X-Men franchise breathing. However, the second Alice adventure only confirms what everyone outside of Disney already knew. People don’t like the first Alice in Wonderland and they had no interest in a sequel.

Someone had to dethrone Captain America: Civil War from its spot at the top of the box office top 10, so why not The Angry Birds Movie? The animated adaptation of the popular mobile game glided into first place with a fairly strong opening weekend, relegating Marvel’s latest adventure to second place.

In news that should surprise no one at all, Captain America: Civil War remained number one at the box office in its second weekend, dominating a week where the only new competition was a thriller skewed toward older audiences and a barely marketed horror film.

A little movie called Captain America: Civl War came out this weekend and made the exact kind of money you’d expect it to make. The thirteenth film in the Marvel Cinematic Universe didn’t have the biggest opening in the series’ history, but it was close enough. It’s easily the biggest opening for a Captain America solo movie (albeit ballooned by a co-starring role for Iron Man) and it managed to open bigger than its chief rival this year, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice. That’s certainly a win.

For the third weekend in a row, The Jungle Book dominated the box office, taking the top spot and making it look easy. It’s been a fairly astonishing run for a movie that felt like a big question mark a few months ago, but this is what the combination of spectacle, strong reviews, and strong word-of-mouth brings you. While this weekend was ultimately all about Jon Favreau’s big-budget take on Rudyard Kipling’s beloved stories, there were a few other new releases. But as you could have guessed, Keanu, Mother’s Day, and Ratchet and Clank didn’t do solid enough business to warrant mention in the headline.

Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice was never not going to have an enormous opening weekend. Toxic reviews and mixed word of mouth mean nothing next to hype — that title alone guaranteed a record-breaking start. And right now, Zack Snyder’s superhero epic does look like a gigantic hit. However, this weekend is really all about the trailers and posters and Warner Bros.’ omnipresent marketing. The real challenge will be next weekend, when the film’s legs will be properly tested.

Pardon the pun, but Zootopia is a beast. Disney Animation’s new film held on to the number one spot at the box office for the third weekend in a row and made it look easy. Not even Allegiant, the third film in the Divergent series, could topple it. Could the film end up pulling Frozen numbers? Maybe. Possibly. We’ll have to see how strong it stands in the face of a couple of superheroes.

That sound you hear is the folks over at Disney popping a couple dozen bottles of champagne — Zootopia didn’t just open at number one at the box office, it had the biggest opening of any film in the history of Walt Disney Animation Studios, beating out 2014’s Frozen. Unfortunately, the rest of the newcomers didn’t fare quite as well, with London Has Fallen and Whiskey Tango Foxtrot limping into second and fourth place, respectively.