‘Hotel Transylvania 3’ Launches In First Place

Sony Pictures Animation’s Hotel Transylvania 3: Summer Vacation debuted in first place at the U.S. box office last weekend with an estimated $44.1 million from 4,267 theaters.

The new film, budgeted at a relatively modest $80 million, reaffirms the consistency of the Hotel Transylvania franchise, with all three films having opened in the top spot. HT3′s opening weekend falls in between the first two films: the original opened with $42.5 million in 2013, and HT2 delivered $48.4 million in 2015.

The Genndy Tartakovsky-directed film had earlier picked up $1.3 million from a special Amazon Prime matinee screening on Saturday, June 30, so its overall domestic cume is $45.4 million. That’s good enough to make it the second-highest grossing animated feature of 2018, after just one weekend. Internationally, the film has already grossed $54.8M, giving HT3 a global total of around $100 million.

The launch is also impressive considering that Disney-Pixar’s Incredibles 2 is still in the middle of its record-breaking box office run. In its fifth weekend, I2 landed in fourth place, grossing an estimated $16.2M and lifting its total to $535.8M. Unadjusted for inflation, the film now ranks as the ninth-highest grossing domestic theatrical release of all time.

I2 has also grossed $322.6M internationally, for a worldwide total of $858.4M. Globally, it has leapfrogged Inside Out to become the fourth-highest grossing Pixar release of all-time. With some major territory releases to come in the second half of July and into August, expect the Brad Bird film to climb even higher on Pixar’s all-time list.

Also notable, the classic 1968 feature Yellow Submarine picked up $84,379 in the second week of its 50th anniversary re-release. Its domestic total is $460,961, which makes it the third-highest grossing hand-drawn release of 2018 in the U.S., behind Mary and the Witch’s Flower and Fireworks.