Director Jon Favreau’s remake of the Disney animated classic ‘Lion King’ has collected a massive $185 million from 4,756 North American theaters during its first three days of release.
The film is doing numbers overseas as well, earning $269 million, according to Variety. The film launched in China last weekend and within the early release week earned $98 million, boosting worldwide earnings to $552 million.
Those numbers represent the second-largest domestic debut of the year behind Disney and Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Endgame’ ($357 million). The Buena Vista company now holds five of the top six biggest movies of 2019 so far.
“We have a lot to celebrate,” said Cathleen Taff, Disney’s president of global distribution. “‘The Lion King’ has such a resonance in pop culture that you see all different types of people coming out. People wanted to be part of this.”
The ‘Lion King’ remake has benefitted not only from being a pop culture classic but also due to the equally popular voice cast including Donald Glover as Simba, Beyoncé as Nala, Chiwetel Ejiofor as Scar, and Billy Eichner and Seth Rogen as Timon and Pumbaa. And of course, James Earl Jones reprised his role as Mufasa from the original movie. The updated version also includes a new song from Beyoncé .
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore (SCOR), told CNN Business, “The Lion King’ had a perfect release date, great marketing and above all boasts iconic characters that have resonated with audiences around the world for over two decades.”
