The Jungle Book Is The Box Office VIP While Barbershop 3 Serves A Solid Amount of Customers

It's pretty apparent at this point that Disney's live-action adaptations of their classic animated features are as close to guaranteed money-makers as you'll find at the domestic box office. After the likes of Alice In Wonderland, Maleficent and Cinderella made bug bucks for the Mouse House, the newest entry in this subgenre, The Jungle Book, debuted to reviews far more positive than the ones given to its kin and also garnered one of the biggest opening weekends for any movie released by Disney. Mowgli and his jungle pals claimed $103.5 million in its first domestic opening weekend, waaay bigger than the bows of Maleficent and Cinderella and the second biggest opening weekend ever for April.

That gives The Jungle Book the ninth biggest opening weekend ever for a Disney movie. Plus, for the various stars involved in the film, it's also one of their biggest movies ever. For instance, it's the fifth biggest movie ever (unadjusted for inflation) for Bill Murray after just three days and should have no trouble toppling the $242 million haul of Ghostbusters to become his biggest movie ever. Meanwhile, it's a guarantee that The Jungle Book will become the fourth ever movie (following Thor: The Dark World, Zootopia and Avengers: Age Of Ultron) to gross $200 million domestically for Idris Elba. And finally, it's also worth mentioning that this is already Christopher Walken's sixth biggest movie ever and it goes without saying that The Jungle Book will beat out the $209 million gross of Wedding Crashers to become the biggest film ever for the iconic actor.

A sense of nostalgia for the beloved Disney cartoon it's remaking certainly helped The Jungle Book, but that's not the whole story behind why this one took off like a rocket at the box office. From the very first teaser, The Jungle Book had some extremely distinctive visuals on display that promised that this new version would be offering something different on a visual level from the classic 1967 film. It also helps that the marketing emphasized elements people loved about the original feature (namely The Bare Necessities), as well as the fact that there hadn't been a new major family film in the marketplace for awhile. With great reviews from both audiences (viewers gave The Jungle Book an A CinemaScore) and critics, expect The Jungle Book to stick around at the domestic box office for a little while.

Barbershop: The Next Cut surprisingly had the worst opening weekend of its trilogy, grossing $20.2 million this weekend, a sharp decline from the bows of Barbershop 2 ($24.2 million) and even slightly down from the original Barbershop ($20.6 million). After a twelve year long hiatus, very few sequels (basically only Star Wars and Indiana Jones) can solely cling to reserved nostalgia and goodwill to give them box office dominance. Though the reviews for it were strong, Barbershop 3 failed to show off compelling new characters or a strong storyline in its ads. Still, this one didn't cost much to make and it didn't fall off that much from its predecessors. Sure, it came in under expectations, but this is still a solid opening number.

In third place was last week's victor The Boss, which fell 57% in its second frame for a gross of $10.1 million, bringing its domestic cume to $40.3 million. That's a much steeper second-weekend decline than the ones experienced by past Mellisa McCarhty comedies. The Boss should get to $60 million by the end of its run, but it's hard to imagine it going much higher.

Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Jars Of Urine experienced another big plunge this weekend, losing 61% this frame for a $9 million gross this weekend for a current domestic total of $311.3 million. It looks like Batman v. Superman will end its domestic run around $330 million, which would be a 13.5% increase on the domestic performance of Man Of Steel. Meanwhile, the arrival of new Disney family film The Jungle Book meant Zootopia experienced its largest weekend-to-weekend drop yet, losing 43% for a $8.1 million haul. That takes it domestic gross to a spectacular $307.3 million.

Kevin Costner has experienced a number of recent box office duds like Black And White and 3 Days To Kill, and Criminal continued the trend with a pitiful $5.8 million debut. Only seven of Costner's wide release movies have had worse opening weekends. To boot, it's yet another box office misfire for Lionsgate, who've had a murderer's row of box office bombs in 2016 like God's Of Egypt, Allegiant and Norm Of The North. Hardcore Henry experienced a "hardcore" (*rimshot*) second-weekend dip, losing 71% in eleventh place for a second-weekend sum of $1.4 million, taking its meager domestic gross to $8.1 million.

Demolition had a major plummet from last weekend, falling 72% from its dismal debut for a second weekend gross of $307,000. Playing in 862 theaters, that gives it a miserable per-theater-average of $356 and a current domestic total of $1.8 million. This actually makes Demolition by far the worst performing wide release ever for Jake Gyllenhaal and, in terms of his entire filmography, only Donnie Darko and Enemy have made less.

Finally, let's quickly look at some of the new releases that debuted in limited release this weekend. First up, A24 looks to have another arthouse hit on their hands, as Green Room debut to a strong $91,000 at three locations, giving it a per-theater-average of $30,333. A24 plans to take this title into wide release on April 29th. Meanwhile, Sing Street had a far more underwhelming bow, grossing $68,979 at five locations for a per-theater average of $13,796.

Overall, the top 12 grossed a strong $168.2 million this weekend, up 50% from the same frame last year and by far the biggest gross ever for the sixteenth weekend of the year.