Box office: Computer-animated apes come to the rescue... again

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes topped the chart in its opening week while another CGI-primate movie, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, was still in the Top 5 after seven weeks.

A talking chimp named Noa (Owen Teague) is flanked by the orangutan Raka (Peter Macon) and the human Mae (Freya Allen) in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Apes did their part to try to save the box office again this week.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes—the fourth installment in the post-apocalyptic, talking-primate series since it was rebooted with motion-capture performances thirteen years ago, and the first film in the entire 56-year-old franchise to be made without Charlton Heston, Roddy McDowall, or Andy Serkis in its cast—grossed an estimated $56.5 million over the weekend.

That was on par with the openings of other recent entries in the series, and it was also enough to make the film already one of the most successful 20th Century Studios productions since Disney bought the company from Fox five years ago.

The film’s success came less than two months after another movie about computer-animated primates—Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, which spends a lot more time on the giant gorilla and his peers than it does on the lizard with atomic breath—scored one of the biggest opening weekends of the year back in early March.

Godzilla x Kong was still one of the five biggest movies at the box office in this, its seventh week—so there were actually two ape-heavy movies in this week’s Top 5—but it achieved this distinction by grossing only $2.5 million over the weekend.

And that, in and of itself, was indicative of how theatres are still struggling in the wake of last year’s strikes, which forced many films to be shut down or delayed, resulting in a very thin release schedule that has allowed some movies to rank fairly high on the chart even when they aren’t selling all that many tickets.

Ticket sales for all movies combined came to about $93 million this week, which made this the sixth weekend in a row that theatrical revenue fell below $100 million.

That would be concerning enough at any time of year—in 2019, the last pre-Covid year, there were only four such weekends, period—but as David Poland notes, the past two weekends also mark the first time since 2000 (not counting the lockdown years) that the first two weekends in May both failed to reach $100 million.

Can upcoming releases like IF (May 17), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (May 24), and The Garfield Movie (also May 24) help turn the tide? We shall see.

And now, a few more stats and facts re: this week’s top ten, title by title: