$DIS, $SNE,

Disney (NYSE:DIS) continues to dominate the box office this year as Jon Favreau’s The Lion King opened to a record-breaking $185-M at the North American box office at the weekend for an early global total of $531-M.

The movie scored the biggest domestic open ever for a PG film, and the 9th-biggest for any movie, and posted a record for a Disney release outside of Marvel Studios and Lucasfilm.

Overseas, The Lion King earned a mighty $269.4-M at the weekend from 52 markets. It came in #1 everywhere and made a particularly strong showing in Russia, Australia and the entire Latin America region.

The overall foreign total of $346-M includes $97.5-M from China, where it debuted early last weekend.

Employing groundbreaking photo-realistic CG and featuring a star-studded voice cast, The Lion Kingis another win for Disney’s aggressive campaign to re-imagine its animated classics and a career-best start for Mr. Favreau.

The Summer box office needed a boost.

As of Friday, Y 2019 revenue was running behind last year by 9%. Through Sunday, the gap narrowed to 7%

The Lion King garnered glowing exit scores and an ethnically diverse audience. Ticket buyers disregarded lukewarm reviews, awarding the film an A CinemaScore.

The film skewed female by as much as 60%. The demo mix was 44% Caucasian, 22% African-American, 20% Hispanic and 14% Asian/Other, according to PostTrak.

Sony and Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Far From Home came in #2 in its 3rd weekend with $21-M toward $1-M globally.

Pixar and Disney’s Toy Story 4 took 3rd place in its 5th weekend for a take $859.4-M globally so far.

Paramount’s disaster-horror pic Crawl made gained in its 2nd weekend coming in 4th domestically for a global take of $33.7-V Vs a $13-M production budget.

Working Title and Universal’s Yesterday rounded out the Top 5 for a global take of $98.2-M The film is the only adult-skewing title to work on a nationwide basis this Summer.

At the specialty box office

Lulu Wang’s The Farewell, the critically acclaimed dramedy that has a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. The A24 release grossed $1.2-M from 35 locations in its 2nd weekend for a location average of $33,084.

Several new documentaries debuted

Sony Pictures Classics’ David Crosby: Remember My Name, which grossed $41,050 from 4 theaters for a promising location average of $10,263.

Neon made a Apollo 11, timed to Saturday’s 50th anni of the Moon landing. The doc grossed a domestic total of $9-M, the best showing of the year so far for a doc.

Have some fun, see a movie this week.

  box, DIS, Disney, film, globally, King, lion, markets, movie, office, SNE, Sony, Summer, theaters, tickets

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Paul Ebeling

Paul A. Ebeling, polymath, excels in diverse fields of knowledge. Pattern Recognition Analyst in Equities, Commodities and Foreign Exchange and author of “The Red Roadmaster’s Technical Report” on the US Major Market Indices™, a highly regarded, weekly financial market letter, he is also a philosopher, issuing insights on a wide range of subjects to a following of over 250,000 cohorts. An international audience of opinion makers, business leaders, and global organizations recognizes Ebeling as an expert.

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