‘Tarzan,’ ‘BFG’ dwarfed by ‘Dory,’ which stays no. 1

This weekend was reminiscent of the Fourth of July box office a year ago, when new releases “Terminator: Genisys” and “Magic Mike XXL” fizzled as another three-week-old Pixar movie, “Inside Out”, topped the charts.

BFG opened in Australia at the weekend, but local figures are not yet available.

“Finding Dory” has arguably been the most impressive box office performer of the summer thus far, and it continued to show great holding power with a holiday weekend that was down 31% from last weekend’s three-day frame. The Walt Disney Company acquired Pixar Animation Studios for $7.4 billion in 2006, notably in between the release of these two films.

Rounding out the 10 most-popular movies in the United States and Canada this weekend were “Independence Day: Resurgence” (16.5 million dollars), “Central Intelligence” (12.3 million), “The Shallows” (9 million), “Free State Of Jones” (4.1 million), “The Conjuring 2” (3.9 million) and “Now You See Me 2” (3 million).

Ice Age: Collision Course, the fifth installment in the Ice Age series, brought in $1.6 million over the weekend to bring its cume to nearly $4 million in its first week.

Director Steven Spielberg on the set of Disney’s The BFG, based on the book by Roald Dahl.

“Tarzan” came the closest to dethroning “Dory” with $38.1 million. The film, which cost $180 million to make and tens of millions more to market, was projected to deliver $19.9 million from Friday to Sunday, according to Box Office Mojo. This is primarily due to incredibly expensive visual effects.

The “Finding Nemo” sequel narrowly beats “The Legend of Tarzan” which debuts in the second place. “You can best assess it a month from now”.

Alexander Skarsgard appears in “The Legend of Tarzan”. For The BFG, the studio is once more banking on the worldwide market to make it a success.

“Its frustrating when theres a disconnect between the critical response, the consumer response and ultimately the box office, ” said Dave Hollis, distribution head for Disney.

“We’ve seen the way people are speaking of and rating the film”, he said. “We’re going to be reliant in a lot of ways on global”.

Once again, Finding Dory finds itself atop the box office.

While The Legend of Tarzan brought the iconic character back to the big screen in an epic adventure and received plenty of positive reviews from fans, critics were not as impressed with the big budget flick.

For a movie sequel that took only $10 million to produce, the movie is doing well, and it is even expected to finish the weekend with $33 million and a total of $37 million by Fourth of July holiday.