Despite harsh critic reviews, Cars 2 soared past the checkered flag leaving the competition in the dust (warning, more bad racing puns ahead). The latest Disney-Pixar picture (that’s what they called movies in old-timey English) crossed the finish line with an estimated $68 million in box office receipts, making it the fourth highest-grossing June opening weekend ever. Cars 2 is the 12th number one hit in a row for Pixar and the fifth highest-grossing opening weekend yet for a Pixar movie, behind Toy Story 3‘s $110.3 million, The Incredibles‘ $70.5 million, Finding Nemo‘s $70.3 million and Up‘s $68.1 million. Time To Play’s family film critic, Cynthia Fuchs, has a full review of the movie.
Coming in second with less than half of Cars 2‘s earnings was Bad Teacher, starring Cameron Diaz, Justin Timberlake and Jason Segel. This documentary about the problem with American schools goofball comedy about teachers, who I’m guessing are bad (?), took in $31 million, which was $6 million more than industry projections.
The story is much dimmer for Green Lantern, which in it’s second weekend of release, only managed to make $18.4 million appear. While $18.4 million is a lot of money, it was a steep drop for the non-caped crusader flick, which plumetted 65 percent from it’s opening weekend take and has only earned $89.3 million total, which isn’t even half of the movies’ production budget of $200 million.
Here is the top ten for the weekend of June 24-26, 2011:
1 Cars 2 ($68,000,000)
2 Bad Teacher ($31,000,000)
3 Green Lantern ($18,350,000)
4 Super 8 ($12,100,000)
5 Mr. Popper’s Penguins ($10,300,000)
6 X-Men: First Class ($6,600,000)
7 The Hangover Part II ($5,865,000)
8 Bridesmaids ($5,372,000)
9 Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides ($4,702,000)
10 Midnight in Paris ($4,481,000)