Furious fowl ruled the roost at the weekend box office.
Moviegoers flocked to see The Angry Birds Movie, which took flight with $39 million and No. 1, according to studio estimates from comScore. The family comedy — an adaptation of the popular app game — scored the third-best animated debut of the year, behind Zootopia ($75.1 million) and Kung Fu Panda 3 ($41.3 million). It was enough to knock Captain America: Civil War from its perch, which fell to No. 2.
Budgeted at $73 million, Angry Birds features the voices of Jason Sudeikis, Sean Penn, Maya Rudolph, Danny McBride and Josh Gad. Despite ruffling a few feathers among critics (whose reviews were only 42% positive on RottenTomatoes), audiences embraced it slightly more (61% liked it).
"It's a rare bird," says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore. "The video game aspect is drawing that audience that knows the brand, but then there's the crossover of family audiences who have really been drawn to PG-rated movies this year. This is a strong showing for the film," although the overall weekend box office is about 25% lower than it was this time last year, when Mad Max: Fury Road and Pitch Perfect 2 started on a high note.
Dropping to second place in its third week, Civil War muscled its way to $33.1 million, with a total of $347.4 million stateside and just over $1 billion worldwide. The superhero face-off starring Chris Evans and Robert Downey Jr. is now the seventh highest-grossing Marvel movie, performing slightly below last year's Avengers: Age of Ultron, which notched $372 million in its first three weeks and finished with $459 million in the USA.
Opening at No. 3, Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising brought down the house with a solid, if not spectacular, $21.8 million. The R-rated comedy reunites Seth Rogen and Rose Byrne as parents who team up with their former fratboy nemesis (Zac Efron) to take down hard-partying sorority sisters (led by Chloë Grace Moretz). With just OK reviews (61% positive), the film brought in less than half the business of its predecessor, which premiered with $49 million in May 2014 on its way to $150.2 million.
"That was going to be a hard act to follow, no matter what," Dergarabedian says. "R-rated comedies do so well in the summer because they're fresh and funny, but it's hard to replicate that. It's usually the original content from that genre that does well," calling to mind last year's Ted 2, which opened to nearly half ($33.5 million) of the 2012 original ($54.4 million).
Bringing up the rear, Shane Black's The Nice Guys was welcomed with a better-than-expected $11.3 million in fourth place. The 1970s noir comedy stars Ryan Gosling and Russell Crowe as mismatched detectives and has been embraced by critics (90% positive reviews) as well as moviegoers (84% liked it). Disney's live-action The Jungle Book rounded out the top five with $11 million in fifth, swinging to a wild $327.5 million since opening last month.
Final figures are expected Monday.
