‘The Angry Birds Movie’ Launches with $43M, ‘Jungle Book’ Is India’s Biggest Hollywood Film Ever

Rovio’s The Angry Birds Movie won’t arrive in the U.S. until next weekend, but it launched this weekend in 74 international markets with $43 million.

The figure represents a little less than two-thirds of its global footprint. The movie, directed by Clay Kaytis and Fergal Reilly, opened in first place in about half of its markets, with Russian moviegoers delivering the biggest share with $5.7 million.

While the film was produced by Sony Pictures Imageworks and is being distributed by Sony, the bulk of the investment came from Finnish game maker Rovio, which has bet its future on the success of this film. It’s still too early to tell if Rovio’s gamble will pay off based on these first weekend numbers.

Along with its U.S. release, The Angry Birds Movie opens in China and South Korea next weekend.

Disney’s The Jungle Book passed $800m in global gross, making it the fifth-highest-grossing live-action film the studio has released. The pic has grossed a record-shattering $37.4m in India, the biggest Hollywood earner ever released in that country. Despite being the world’s second-most-populous country, India has largely been a non-factor for Hollywood studios for a variety of reasons, including the lack of dubbing in local languages and the country’s own robust cinema industry, known as Bollywood. The previous Hollywood record in India was Furious 7 in 2015, which earned just $23.4m.

Localization helped Disney in India. Jungle Book offered dubs in three languages — Hindi, Tamil and Telugu — in addition to its English version, and Disney enlisted major Indian stars to voice the dubs, including Irrfan Khan, Priyanka Chopra, Nana Patekar, Shefali Shah, and Om Puri for the Hindi version. Disney aimed to “awaken the Mowgli in every Indian,” according to Amrita Pandey, v-p/head of marketing and distribution, Disney India.

Zootopia added an extra $7.5m globally, lifting its cume to $970 million. After 11 weeks at the U.S. box office, the film remains amazingly in 6th place. It added $2.8m stateside for a $331.8m U.S. total.

Gramercy Pictures’ Ratchet & Clank dropped to 11th place in its third weekend. The film slipped 57%, picking up $629,742 from 1,258 theaters, for an $8.1m total.

In its eighth weekend, GKIDS’ release of the French feature April and the Extraordinary World added $10,591 from 18 theaters. It averaged $588 per screen, which was an increase from last weekend’s $546 per-screen average from 35 theaters. The film has grossed a total of $270,890 from U.S. theaters, lifting it past Ernest & Celestine ($262,075) to become the 10th-highest-grossing GKIDS release.