"FINDING DORY" set for record-breaking opening

“Finding Dory” is swimming toward a record-breaking $130 million opening weekend, early estimates showed. Disney/Pixar's animated sequel — playing in 4,305 North American theaters with Ellen DeGeneres in the lead voice role — is completely dominating movie-going, set to earn more than $50 million on its opening day Friday. That includes $9.2 million from Thursday night, the biggest debut of all time for an animated film.

Action-comedy “Central Intelligence”, teaming Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, is launching with a solid $35 million this weekend.

The most conservative estimates Friday for “Finding Dory” were in the $115 million to $130 million range. Sunday's telecast of the NBA final game may hold down some business at the end of the weekend, but it's likely that “Dory” will break the nine-year-old record for best domestic animated opening, set by “Shrek the Third” in 2007 with $121.6 million. “Minions” is in second at $115.7 million, followed by Disney/Pixar's “Toy Story 3” with $110 million.

Should the film hit $130 million this weekend, it will rank as one of the top 20 domestic openers of all time. Marvel-Disney's “Captain America: Civil War” had the year's highest-grossing launch with $179 million, the fifth-biggest debut of all time.

Early indications are that Disney has a blockbuster that's going to perform similarly over its life to 2003's original “Finding Nemo”, the story of a fish separated from his father, which grossed $936.7 million globally and won an Oscar for best animated feature. “Finding Nemo” had a solid $70 million domestic opening weekend, and then gained traction in the subsequent weeks to finish its initial run with $340 million.

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The sequel reunites original director Andrew Stanton with DeGeneres returning to voice Dory along with Albert Brooks voicing her friend Marlin. Stanton's co-director Angus MacLane is making his filmmaking debut. The new story centers on Dory — a blue tang — suffering from short-term memory loss and scouring the ocean in search of her long-lost parents. Disney did not provide a budget, but Pixar films typically carry price tags between $175 million to $200 million.

“Finding Dory” should also jolt the summer box office, which has declined from last summer and seen disappointing returns from “Warcraft” and sequels such as “Alice Through the Looking Glass” and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows” in recent weeks.

Fox is opening another tentpole sequel next weekend with “Independence Day: Resurgence”, two decades after the original dazzled with more than $800 million.

Source: Variety