“The Wild Robot” is the king of the box office jungle with debut, while “Megalopolis” suffers an apocalypse bow
The Francis Ford Coppola epic grossed only $4 million in its opening weekend.
After three weeks ruling the box office, Beetlejuice Beetlejuice was bumped to second place thanks to the charming whimsy of The Wild Robot, DreamWorks Animation's adaptation of Peter Brown's beloved, award-winning bestseller of the same name.
Domestically, as per Comscore, the film raked in $35 million in its opening weekend, with an additional $18.1 million internationally, for a global debut of $53.1 million.
Related: Lupita Nyong'o on the Wild Robot scene that left her speechless
The animated adventure follows the journey of a robot — ROZZUM unit 7134, "Roz" for short (voiced by Oscar-winner Lupita Nyong'o) — that is shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and must learn to adapt to the harsh surroundings, gradually building relationships with the animals on the island and becoming the adoptive parent of an orphaned gosling.
The rest of the all-star voice cast includes Pedro Pascal, Catherine O'Hara, Bill Nighy, Kit Connor, and Stephanie Hsu.
Nyong'o described to Entertainment Weekly how a four-day recording session led to the actress damaging her voice, leaving her silent for three months.
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"I was actually on my way to surgery, but my doctor said, 'If you take care of your voice and use your inside voice — no whispering, because whispering is just as bad as shouting — and do a lot of vocal rest, you could stave off surgery.' And so I was able to heal my voice by just shutting up," Nyong'o said.
In its fourth week of release, Tim Burton's long-awaited sequel to 1988's Beetlejuice pulled in $16 million, for a domestic cume of $250 million ($373 million globally). Transformers One took third place with $9.3 million, bringing its two-week domestic total of $39.2 million ($72 million globally).
Related: Giancarlo Esposito explains how Megalopolis connects to the presidential election
India's Devara Part 1, an epic action saga set against coastal lands, debuted domestically with $5.1 million and scored an additional $27.8 million from international markets to land at No. 2 at the global box office this weekend with $32.9 million. And rounding out the top 5, Blumhouse's Speak No Evil grossed $4.3 million, for a three-week domestic cume of $28.1 millon ($57.7 million globally).
Meanwhile, Francis Ford Coppola's embattled and divisive Megalopolis, a Roman Epic fable set in an imagined modern America, earned just $4 million in its opening weekend ($6.1 million globally) against a reported budget of $120 million.
In her review of the film, EW's Maureen Lee Lenker called Megalopolis a "stain" on the great director's legacy that "manages to be both chaotic and unspeakably boring."
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