‘Sing’ Spikes At Box Office in Second Weekend

Universal’s plan to release Sing as family counterprogrammining against Rogue One has paid off for the studio. Over New Year’s weekend, the Illumination film enjoyed a 21% boost from its opening frame, picking up an estimated $42.8 million for the weekend—and adding in yesterday’s holiday, a 4-day total of $56.4 million.

The Garth Jennings-directed film has now amassed over $180 million in its first thirteen days, and it has managed to do so without ever hitting number one at the box office. Universal and Illumination could care less about the No. 1 spot though. Thanks to the strong start, Sing is now guaranteed to soon become one of the top-10 grossing domestic releases of 2016, joining Illumination’s other original release, The Secret Life of Pets, on that list. Sing has a global gross of $277.8M to date, and will climb much higher over the next few months.

Sing will also end up beating Moana’s box office total. Head-to-head, after 13 days of release, Disney’s Moana grossed just $121M to Sing’s $180M. That’s not to say that Moana is a lightweight though. In its sixth frame, the John Musker and Ron Clements film also enjoyed a holiday boost, rising 42% to $11M (estimated) and $14.3M for the four-day. The film has grossed $213.4M domestically in 41 days. Not every Disney entry is going to generate Zootopia and Frozen box office levels, but with over $400 million in global gross to date, Moana can still be counted as a Disney success.

Over the holiday, Dreamworks’ Trolls crossed $150M at the U.S. box office. Its worldwide total is $333.1M. That’s certainly nothing to scoff at and is consistent with other recent Dreaworks releases (Home, Penguins of Madagascar), but for a film that cost $125 million to produce, the total fails to impress alongside the consistent $500M+ worldwide grosses of Disney, Illumination, and Pixar.