The latest movie in the Cars franchise, "cars 3," has wrapped up a successful opening weekend at the box office. It took the top spot from that had been held by 'Wonder Woman' and is proving to be just the latest box office hit that Disney has put out in 2017. The movie once again stars Owen Wilson as Lightning McQueen, alongside newcomers Jackson Storm (Armie Hammer) and Cruz Ramirez (Cristela Alonzo).
'Cars 3' speeds past all box office competition
During its opening weekend, "Cars 3" pulled in a projected domestic box office haul of $53.5 million for Disney and Pixar.
This easily beat out 'Wonder Women', which took in an estimated $40.7 million and saw its run at the number one spot ended during its third weekend. Overseas, 'Cars 3' made an estimated $21 million to boost its total worldwide opening weekend up to around $75 million. It is now the 16th Pixar film to debut at number one.
The movie is on pace to makee a profit on its reported $175 million dollar budget, despite have a worse opening weekend then its predecessors. It is doing better in the rating department then it predecessor, as 'Cars 2' has a 39% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, while 'Cars 3' currently has a 66% rating.
Just how well have Disney's movies done this year?
"Cars 3" was only Disney's last hit movie to dominate the box office this year.
Their first mammoth hit was 'Beauty and the Beast', which came out on March 17th. So far it has made a total of $1.25 billion dollars at the box office against a production budget of $160 million. This made it the 29th movie ever to get to the $1 billion mark and the 14th by Disney. 'Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2' came out on May 5th and has so far made $844 million worldwide against a budget of $200 million.
Lastly, 'Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales' came out on May 26th. It has made an estimated $651 million against a $230 million budget.
Combining all of this with only the opening weekend of "Cars 3," these four movies have made a total of about $2.82 billion dollars worldwide against a production budget of around $765 million.
All four of these movies are still in theaters. This means that for this year, Disney has had four different films make their box office debut at number one. The scary part of this is that their biggest movie of the year, 'Stars Wars: The Last Jedi', comes out on December 15th, with the last two 'Star Wars' movies having made over $1 billion at the box office worldwide.
