The Jungle Book's Opening Numbers Are Astounding
The animated Zootopia garnered overwhelmingly positive reviews and continues to pick up considerable box office weeks after release (its worldwide total is now at $882.3 million), but it was this weekend’s The Jungle Book that really stands out, as director Jon Favreau’s gorgeous, jaw-dropping update of the classic Rudyard Kipling story opened to a staggering $103.5 million at the box office, making it the second largest April opening in history, topping Captain America: The Winter Soldier’s $95 million and standing behind Furious 7’s record of $147.1 million.
Internationally The Jungle Book is exploding as well, with its international cumulative box office to date standing at $187.4 million, bringing its worldwide box office to $290.9 million after just one week of worldwide release. It’s no surprise that Disney is already putting into motion plans for The Jungle Book 2, and the massive success of Favreau’s darker-than-expected adaptation may have something to do with Warner Bros. recently pushing Andy Serkis’ motion-capture Jungle Book: Origins another year this past week.
With the success of this film, we can assume that more live action adaptations of classic Disney films will be coming in future. Recently Disney announced the Director who is going to helm the Peter Pan film and A live action Beauty and the Beast starring Emma Watson as Belle is arriving in 2017 while Disney has announced the development of Mulan, Dumbo, a Tinkerbell film, Pinocchio, The Little Mermaid, Winnie the Pooh, and a prequel to Aladdin starring the Genie.
Check out the full Top 10 for the weekend below.
| Rank | Title | Weekend | Domestic Total |
| 1. | The Jungle Book | $103,567,000 | $103,567,000 |
| 2. | Barbershop: The Next Cut | $20,210,000 | $20,210,000 |
| 3. | The Boss | $10,170,000 | $40,251,910 |
| 4. | Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice | $9,010,000 | $311,311,730 |
| 5. | Zootopia | $8,235,000 | $307,478,756 |
| 6. | Criminal | $5,850,000 | $5,850,000 |
| 7. | My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 | $3,260,000 | $52,095,490 |
| 8. | Miracles from Heaven | $1,900,000 | $56,930,812 |
| 9. | God’s Not Dead 2 | $1,712,236 | $16,956,407 |
| 10. | Eye in the Sky | $1,561,998 | $13,121,983 |
The Jungle Book, directed by Jon Favreau and written by Justin Marks, stars Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Christopher Walken, Lupita Nyong’o and Neel Sethi as Mogli and is now open in theaters.
