LOS ANGELES – The Walt Disney Co. is ruling the box office again with the record-breaking debut of “The Lion King” this weekend.
The studio says Sunday that the photorealistic remake devoured an estimated $185 million in ticket sales from 4,725 North American locations. It’s a record for the month of July and PG-rated films, and the ninth-highest opening of all time.
Globally, it’s already grossed $531 million. No other studio even dared to go up against “The Lion King” with a major release.
In its third weekend, “Spider-Man: Far From Home” fell to second place with $21 million. “Toy Story 4” took third with $14.6 million.
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Baby Simba is shown off to the denizens of Pride Rock in "The Lion King." (Photo: DISNEY)
And with an additional $1.5 million from the weekend, “Avengers: Endgame” has officially surpassed “Avatar” as the biggest film of all time with $2.79 billion.
Rounding out the rest of the top five: The alligator disaster movie “Crawl” finished fourth with $6 million and the Beatles-inspired fantasy “Yesterday” was fifth with $5.1 million.
Final numbers are expected Monday.
Contributing: Kim Willis
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