It took 20 years for Roland Emmerich to deliver a sequel to Independence Day, a film that’s largely responsible for the modern summer blockbuster season. Unfortunately, it looks like most audiences didn’t think it was worth the wait. As predicted in recent weeks, Resurgence crash-landed in theaters with an underwhelming opening weekend that was no match for Pixar’s Finding Dory.

FilmWeekendPer Screen
1Finding Dory$73,234,746 (-45.8)$17,012$286,552,649
2Independence Day: Resurgence$41,600,000$10,226$41,600,000
3Central Intelligence$18,370,000 (-48.3)$5,237$69,302,458
4The Shallows$16,700,000$5,638$16,700,000
5Free State of Jones$7,772,000 
$2,761$7,772,000
6The Conjuring 2$7,705,000 (-48.2)$2,540$86,096,434
7Now You See Me 2$5,650,000  (-39.7)$2,058$52,054,214
8X-Men: Apocalypse$2,475,000 (-53.4)$1,474$151,126,991
9Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows$2,400,000 (-54.3)$1,233$77,117,555
10Alice Through the Looking Glass$2,147,144 (-50.0)$4,338$74,574,007

Independence Day: Resurgence made just $41.6 million in its debut weekend on a reported budget of $165 million. That’s hugely disappointing news for Emmerich and Fox, and it doesn’t look like this one is going to turn into a sleeper hit — negative reviews and bad word-of-mouth guarantee that Emmerich’s latest disaster epic will almost certainly be remembered as a failure. It also doesn’t bode well for the director’s plans to make another ID4 sequel.

You could blame the 20-year gap between ID4 and Resurgence for those underwhelming numbers, but Finding Dory proves that a long-awaited sequel can be a huge hit. Pixar’s latest just kept swimming in its second weekend, picking up another $73.2 million for a $286.5 million gross. The family-friendly animated adventure will have some real competition next weekend with the release of The BFG.

The Shallows, aka Blake Lively vs. Shark, also opened this weekend with a respectable $16.7 million. Jaume Collet-Serra’s latest offered much-needed counter-programming to the utter CGI insanity of Independence Day: Resurgence. With positive word-of-mouth, The Shallows might survive the typical second-weekend drop for new horror films, but it’ll have stiff competition next week when The Purge: Election Year arrives.

This week’s other new releases didn’t fare as well. Matthew McConaughey’s Civil War drama Free State of Jones debuted at just $7.7 million, proving that maybe it should’ve stuck with its original March release date. The Neon Demon didn’t even land in the top 10, as Nicolas Winding Refn’s latest debuted in 15th place with a seriously disappointing $606,594 with a per-screen average of $775. The film is in Amazon Studios’ hands, and after a brief theatrical run it may still find success on VOD.

Elsewhere in the top 10, Central Intelligence took a 48 percent drop with $18.3 million in its second weekend. The Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart buddy comedy has made a total of $69.3 million on a budget of about $50 million. That’s a solid return, and one that should make executives feel pretty confident in the upcoming Jumanji reboot; Johnson and Hart make for a winning combo in a decent comedy, but when you put those two in a family-friendly adventure, they could totally slay the box office.

The Conjuring 2 dropped another 48 percent with $7.7 million for a gross of $86.9 million. That’s more than solid for a new horror film, especially one in its third weekend of release. The back-half of the top 10 is filled with big budget disappointments: Now You See Me 2 pulled in another $5.6 million, failing to measure up to its predecessor. X-Men: Apocalypse hung on with $2.4 million, bringing its total to $151.1 million — but with a budget of $178, Bryan Singer’s latest X-Men outing is still the least successful installment of the franchise.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows dropped another 54 percent with $2.4 million, while Alice Through the Looking Glass continued to fail spectacularly as it clung to the bottom of the top 10 with $2.1 million. Turns out if you make a sequel no one wanted to a movie no one really liked, no one is really going to go see it.

Next weekend will shake things up a bit with the latest installment in The Purge franchise, a new film from Steven Spielberg, and The Legend of Tarzan.

 

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