More than most Pixar outings, Lightyear faced a bit of an uphill battle. There was its premise, which was still confusing people mere days before release. There was the two-pronged attack from conservatives, over its (brief) same-sex kiss and the recasting of a vocal role originated by the right-ish leaning Tim Allen. And while the end result is far from a box office boondoggle, it was such that good old Buzz wasn’t quite able to defeat the dinosaurs of Jurassic World Dominion.
As per The Hollywood Reporter, Lightyear — which at one point was projected to gross somewhere between $70 and $85 million its opening weekend — “only” grossed $51 million. That makes it a disappointment rather than a disaster. It also means it came in just a handful of millions shy of last weekend’s box office champ, the sixth Jurassic Park entry, which added another $58.7 million to its cume.
Meanwhile, guess which movie made only $7 million less in its fourth weekend that Lightyear did in its first? Top Gun: Maverick, which has become Tom Cruise’s biggest ever moneymaker. The belated sequel made another $44 million for a total of $466 million, which makes it the highest grossing film of the year domestically — though it’s still about $50 million shy of Doctor Strange 2 worldwide.
So bad news for Buzz but good news for Tom, as well as for The Bob’s Burgers Movie, which opened the same weekend as Maverick and has managed to hang in the Top 5 ever since, albeit with a tiny fraction of what the Cruise starrer has Hoovered up. Still, a combined total of $29 million is a pretty good haul for the Belchers.
(Via THR)
