The box-office seems to love its simians right now.
Following this past weekend’s success of “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire,” the earliest projections have come in for May’s launch of “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” and its bananas.
The film, which opens May 10th, is on track for a domestic opening weekend of $54-61 million according to tracking service Quorum.
That puts it on par with some other entries in the series with “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” debuting at $54.8M and “War for the Planet of the Apes” coming in at $56.3M.
It’s behind both the middle entry in the trilogy, the acclaimed “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” which took $72.6M in its debut. Tim Burton’s 2001 remake also was stronger at $68.5M.
In addition, its indicated that men are going to turn out big for the film with interest numbers higher for this than last summer’s new “Mission: Impossible” and “Transformers” entries.
The interest isn’t a surprise as ‘Apes’ had the second-most watched Super Bowl movie trailer 24 hours after the game – behind only “Deadpool & Wolverine”.
The box-office boost will be needed as April is lean on openings with debuts for films like “Monkey Man,” “Civil War,” “The First Omen,” “Challengers,” “Unsung Heroes,” “Abigail” and “The Ministry of Ungentlemenly Warfare” all expected to be under $20 million each, with many around half that.
Source: Deadline