‘Dumbo’ Premiere Falls Flat
Nearly eight decades after the 1941 original, Disney’s live-action “Dumbo” arrived in theaters this weekend, making $45 million in ticket sales, topping the domestic box office. However, that figure fell slightly below analysts’ expectations of around $50 million, and overall made for a moderately disappointing opening for a Tim Burton film, which reportedly had a production budget of $170 million.
It’s also less than half of what “Beauty and the Beast,” “The Jungle Book” and “Alice in Wonderland” earned in their debuts. However, “Dumbo” did make an additional $71 million in overseas sales, bringing its global weekend total to $116 million.
Like the animated original, Burton’s “Dumbo” follows the trials and eventual triumph of an elephant outcast. Danny DeVito, Colin Farrell, Eva Green and Michael Keaton star in the film. Unlike the original, Burton’s adaptation is a darker take on the story, with DeVito playing the owner of a scrappy circus that gets bought by a powerful big-city entrepreneur and amusement-park owner (Keaton), who intends to exploit the circus’s discovery of Dumbo, the flying elephant.
Disney’s other movie, Marvel’s “Captain Marvel,” landed in third place in its fourth weekend with an additional $20.5 million. It now earned more than $350 million in North America and is expected to cross the $1 billion mark globally sometime this week.
By: Maytinee Kramer
