It was a bad weekend for franchise blockbusters at the box office, as Universal/Illumination’s “The Secret Life of Pets 2’ and Fox/Disney’s “Dark Phoenix” arrived in theaters and opened both below industry expectations and well behind the openings of their series predecessors.“Secret Life of Pets 2” took No.
1 this weekend, but with an opening of $47.1 million from 4,561 screens and a $97 million global opening from 21 overseas markets.
The animated sequel wasn’t expected to come close to matching the $104.3 million that the first “Secret Life” made in 2016, but it has also fallen short of the $50 million opening projected by trackers and has posted one of lowest openings ever for an Illumination release.The only two films from the animation studio with lower openings are the 2011 live-action/CGI hybrid “Hop” with $37.5 million and the 2016 holiday film “Sing,” which opened to $35 million but had its opening total weighed down
Read full article