Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes has continued the franchise’s No. 1 streak. The new movie, which was directed by Wes Ball and stars Owen Teague, Freya Allan, Kevin Durand, Peter Macon, and William H. Macy, is the tenth movie in the overall Planet of the Apes franchise and the fourth in the series of reboot prequels that began in 2011. Taking place about three centuries after the events of the previous movie, the sequel follows a young ape who goes on an adventure that teaches him that his understanding of the relationship between apes and humans may not be entirely correct.
Per Deadline, the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes box office is currently projected to close out its opening weekend with a 3-day total between $52 million and $55 million. Even at the lower bound of its range, this total is more than enough for the movie to take No. 1 at the domestic box office during its debut weekend. While it was the weekend’s only new tentpole release, it has nevertheless defeated holdover titles including The Fall Guy and Challengers to claim the top spot.
With the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes release, it seems that the summer movie season is properly heating up after stumbling out of the gate with the lukewarm debut of the action-comedy The Fall Guy. If the current projections for the upcoming Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga hold true, it could also be the highest-grossing opening weekend of May 2024. However, the movie is performing well even when compared to the previous entries in the franchise, which were all released in the pre-pandemic period.
In addition to keeping up the reboot franchise’s streak of opening at No. 1, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will have an opening weekend on par with the majority of the recent Planet of the Apes movies. The only exception is the second movie, 2014’s Dawn, which opened $16.3 million higher than the second-highest debut so far and went on to become the highest-grossing movie of the entire expanded 10-movie franchise. Below, see how the opening weekend of Kingdom compares to all the other movies in the reboot quadrilogy:
With the exception of Dawn‘s spike, the box office for the Apes franchise has overall been rather consistent. This means that if it keeps up with Rise and War, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes will likely gross somewhere north of $475 million if it isn’t dinged by its B Cinemascore, which is the lowest of the four movies. If it hits that whopping total, it would be the fourth highest-grossing movie of the year so far behind Kung Fu Panda 4 ($521.3 million), Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire ($548.4 million), and Dune: Part Two ($708.7 million).
Source: Deadline