In what was expected to be one of the smaller opening weekends in this year’s epic summer movie season but Disney and Pixar’s Cars 2 ended up surprising almost everyone with an estimated $68 million take at the domestic box office.
Not only did Cars 2 have the biggest 3-day pull of the year so far, it blew the original 2006 film out of the water by an astounding $8 million lead. The newest film pulled in over $110 million worldwide, which is quite impressive, considering how most Pixar films perform overseas.
In second place this weekend was the raunchy comedy from Sony/Columbia, Bad Teacher. The film performed mildly well domestically, pulling in an estimated $31 million and upwards of $20 million overseas.
Another film that opened this weekend made some impressive strides as well, with the indie documentary Conan O’Brien Can’t Stop. The film only opened in 24 screens and managed to pull in $105,000. Not bad for CoCo.
Next weekend, expect the results to be skewed, as Transformers: Dark of the Moon opens to 4,000 screens on Wednesday. Those who miss out on the robot-on-robot action will get Tom Hanks and Julia Roberts in Larry Crowne.
