The summer moviegoing season has ignited, as a trio of remakes led by “War For The Planet Of The Apes” sparked seasonally hot ticket sales at the North American box offices.
The Ape remake debuted this weekend with a studio estimate of $56.5 million in ticket sales, according to industry analysts at comScore. It is the ninth movie on the same simian vs. homo sapiens theme unleashed by Hollywood since the original was released in 1968.
That was enough to overtake a strong performance by “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” which earned $45.2 million in sales this weekend. By Sunday evening, its 10th night, it is predicted to deal $208.3 million in domestic sales.
This year’s Spiderman flick is the tenth featuring the lad bitten by a radioactive spider.
“Despicable Me 3” was on track to add $18.9 million to its total this weekend, and will have a three-week running total of $188 million by Sunday evening.
Rounding out the 10 most-popular movies in the United States and Canada this weekend, as estimated by the studios and collated by comScore, were “Baby Driver” ($8.8 million), “The Big Sick” ($7.6 million), “Wonder Woman” ($6.9 million), “Wish Upon” (debuting with $5.9 million), “Cars 3” ($3.2 million), “Transformers: The Last Knight” ($2.8 million) and “The House” ($1.8 million).
–City News Service