'Lion King' Remake Becomes Disney's Latest Box-Office Smash

Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling

July 21, 2019 10:39 PM

LOS ANGELES — Another weekend at the multiplex, another monster hit from Walt Disney Studios. “The trail of tears,” as an executive at a rival movie studio recently put it.

Jon Favreau’s hyperrealistic remake of “The Lion King” sold an estimated $185 million in tickets at theaters in the United States and Canada between Thursday night and Sunday. In total, Disney’s domestic market share now stands at about 40% for the year, including its newly acquired Fox division. Second-place Warner Bros. has roughly 14%.

Disney said “The Lion King” collected an additional $346 million overseas, with turnout at Imax theaters particularly strong. Reviews were decidedly mixed for the film, which cost an estimated $400 million to make and market worldwide. But ticket buyers seemed to disagree, giving it an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls.

Disney was also celebrating another box-office coup on Sunday. “Avengers: Endgame,” released by the company’s Marvel division in April, squeaked past “Avatar” to rank as the highest-grossing movie on record, not adjusting for inflation. “Avatar” collected $2.79 billion by the end of its run a decade ago, or about $3.3 billion in today’s money.

In the coming days, Disney’s remake of “Aladdin,” released in May, will cross $1 billion worldwide. “Toy Story 4,” which arrived in June from Disney’s Pixar division, is also approaching that threshold; its total now stands at $859 million, according to Comscore.

And the barrage is nowhere near over: Still to come from Disney this year are “Frozen 2,” a “Maleficent” sequel and “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker,” among others. David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, noted that Disney has two more live-action films based on animated predecessors scheduled for next year — a “Mulan” remake and “Cruella,” an origin story for the “101 Dalmatians” villain.

“It remains to be seen whether this format will hit a wall of saturation,” Gross said.

On the other end of the box-office spectrum, Lulu Wang’s “The Farewell” (A24) delivered impressive results in limited release. The PG-rated, subtitled dramedy about a family’s bittersweet reunion in China expanded into 35 theaters and grossed $1.2 million, for a per-screen average of $33,473 — the second best of the weekend behind “The Lion King.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

Brooks Barnes and Nicole Sperling