Weekend Box Office: ‘Captain America: Civil War’ Is The Real ‘Money Monster’

The World Premiere Of Marvel's "Captain America: Civil War" - Red Carpet
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Captain America: Civil War is, by most critical and fan accounts, a fantastic movie that takes superhero action and a compelling story and squeezes them both into one delicious Hot Pocket of excitement. And while it’s perhaps not as great as the Guns N’ Roses song “Civil War,” according to me and your uncle who hasn’t left ‘80s and early ‘90s glam rock behind, the film is living up to financial expectations, dominating the box office for the second-consecutive weekend, and making this weekend’s few new releases choke on its spandex-clad dust. In fact, were you even aware that there were new films in theaters this weekend? Probably not.

Then again, there was considerable enough buzz surrounding the biggest title debuting last Friday, Money Monster, which came from stars George Clooney and Julia Roberts making the press rounds at Cannes, and also spending a few minutes in the back of James Corden’s car. Unfortunately, Clooney’s charm and routinely topical themes like income inequality and that whole “a fool and his money are soon parted” thing weren’t enough to take down The Jungle Book, which claimed the second spot, way way way way way way… (deep breath) way behind Captain America: Civil War.

Let’s check the official domestic numbers from the crunchers at Box Office Mojo:

This weekend’s $72 million haul brings Cap’s worldwide total to $940 million. Will this film be able to crack the billion-dollar mark? Hold on, my dog has just informed me that it just did while I was typing this sentence. Is that accurate? Probably not, but who are we to question my dog?

The horror film The Darkness, which is sadly not about the band that sang “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” had a respectable opening for a movie you likely hadn’t heard of until right now.

Opening Friday, May 20, is The Nice Guys, the Shane Black comedy that looks, at the risk of editorializing, f*cking fantastically wonderful. Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising, which received a rave review from our own Mike Ryan, will try erase some of the ickyness from terrible comedy sequels (looking directly at you, Horrible Bosses 2), and The Angry Birds Movie arrives five years after you thought there would have already been three Angry Birds movies, so expect that sucker to gross 10 times as much as The Nice Guys.

Then we’ll blame it all on Josh Gad.

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