“Dumbo” was no runt — but it was no mammoth hit, either.
Nearly eight decades after the 1941 original, Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” arrived in theaters this weekend to $45 million in ticket sales, topping the domestic box office. But that figure fell slightly below analysts’ expectations of around $50 million, and overall made for a moderately disappointing opening for the Tim Burton film, which reportedly had a production budget of $170 million. An additional $71 million in overseas sales brings its global weekend total to $116 million.
Like the animated original, Burton’s “Dumbo” follows the trials and eventual triumph of an elephant outcast. Unlike the original, the new film is led by famous flesh-and-blood actors: Danny DeVito, Colin Farrell, Eva Green and Michael Keaton. It’s a darker (if PG-rated) take on the story, with DeVito playing the owner of a scrappy circus that gets bought by a powerful big-city entrepreneur and amusement-park owner (Keaton), who intends to exploit the circus’s discovery of Dumbo, the flying elephant.
[Read our critic’s review of “Dumbo.”]
“Dumbo” is the latest in a string of live-action, C.G.I.-buttressed Disney remakes. Its slight underperformance may be due in part to the unenthusiastic reception it received from most critics — it currently holds a 50 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. By comparison, last year’s Winnie-the-Pooh tale from Disney, “Christopher Robin,” received 72 percent positive reviews, and 2017’s live-action “Beauty and the Beast” holds 71 percent. Remakes of “Aladdin” and “The Lion King” are slated for release later this year.
There probably wasn’t much competition between “Dumbo” and this weekend’s other big movie.
Universal’s “Us,” Jordan’s Peele’s family-unfriendly follow-up to his landmark 2017 feature debut, “Get Out,” easily landed in second place, selling $33.6 million in tickets according to Comscore, which compiles box-office data. That’s more than enough to send its cumulative sales past the $100 million mark: after two weekends, the film has now made about $128.2 million domestically.
That puts “Us” slightly ahead of where 2018’s “Halloween” was after its second weekend. “Halloween,” which carried both the name recognition and baggage of a 40-year-old franchise, had a North American total of about $126.7 million by that point. But it also had a significantly higher debut weekend ($77.5 million versus the $70.3 million brought in by “Us”).
The other newcomer in the top five was Pure Flix’s “Unplanned,” an R-rated Christian drama about a young woman who founds an anti-abortion organization. That movie opened to $6.1 million this weekend, landing in fifth place. Neon’s “The Beach Bum,” the latest comedy from the director Harmony Korine which stars Matthew McConaughey as a Florida pothead, flopped with just $1.8 million in domestic sales.