Box office hits and misses: The Jungle Book claws its way to a big weekend

Disney’s live-action adaptation of The Jungle Book surprised just about everyone over the weekend with a $103.5 million debut that exceeded nearly every pundit’s prediction for the all-ages film, and which easily took the top spot at the weekend box office. Along with being the third film to break the $100 million mark this year, The Jungle Book also generated the second-best April premiere of all time (after last year’s Furious 7).

A remake of the 1967 animated feature of the same name, The Jungle Book rode a wave of positive reviews from professional critics and general audiences alike to its impressive opening weekend, and is expected to enjoy a strong run in theaters thanks to the high praise it received.

It was also a decent — but not great — weekend for Barbershop: The Next Cut, a sequel to both 2005’s Beauty Shop and 2004’s Barbershop 2: Back in Business, which premiered to the tune of $20.2 million. The film’s opening weekend was slightly below what was predicted and what the studio expected the movie to earn, but much like The Jungle Book, it received overwhelmingly positive reviews that should carry it forward. Of course, the film’s relatively low budget (reportedly around $20 million) doesn’t hurt its outlook, either.

The only other new release to make it into the weekend’s top ten films was the sci-fi crime drama Criminal, but not even an all-star cast that includes Kevin Costner, Ryan Reynolds, Gary Oldman, Tommy Lee Jones, Gal Gadot, and Alice Eve could save the film from an underwhelming $5.8 million premiere. With that sort of debut, the movie will have a tough time making back its $31 million budget, and the poor reviews it received probably won’t help.

As for the weekend’s other high-profile projects, Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice continued its box-office decline, dropping more than 61.4 percent from the previous weekend and falling below the $10 million mark in just its fourth weekend in theaters. For the sake of comparison, it took Deadpool until its sixth weekend to drop below $10 million. At this point, it looks increasingly unlikely that Batman V Superman will manage to hit $900 million worldwide, which is well short of expectations for a film featuring two of the most popular superheroes in the world.

Next weekend doesn’t feature much in the way of big releases, with only the fantasy spinoff The Huntsman: Winter’s War hitting theaters. Whether the film can beat The Jungle Book is uncertain, but with Captain America: Civil War premiering in just a few weeks, even bigger weekends at the box office are almost certainly on the way.