The box office is illuminated with new records as Pets have created an astounding stunt which has attracted eyeballs from all over the globe. Illumination Entertainment’s recent animated feature The Secret Life of Pets has gained the record for the highest debut of an original animated film in its opening weekend.
The feature based on a light humorous script released on 8 July, 2016 and has earned $103.2 million at the North American box office in its opening weekend. It has thus overpowered Pixar’s Inside Out ($90.4 million) to score the best start ever for an original animated property. The film’s whooping first weekend collection has also gained the title of the sixth-best all-time opening for an animated film.
The movie earned around $38.3 million on its opening Friday, $36.8 on Saturday and $28 million on Sunday. Adding up it’s Thursday preview collection, its opening weekend collection amounted to a total of $103.2 million.
As far as overseas markets are concerned, The Secret Life of Pets has earned $42.60 million from the foreign box office thus leading to a total worldwide opening weekend collection of $145.8 million. This collection has been a boost to Illumination Entertainment as the movie was made against a production budget of just $75 million.
What has been the most interesting fact is that this movie has taken a leap to become Illumination’s ‘second-best start’ after last summer’s Minions ($115.7 million). It has also created an impression that Illumination can create something which is completely different than its usual Despicable Me franchise.
Compared to Disney Pixar’s Finding Dory ($136.2 million opening weekend) which has topped the box-office chart for three consecutive weekends this year, The Secret Life of Pets features a different kind of script revolving around the engaging factor of humour. It is noted that both Disney and Pixar are known for heart touching stories where humour is used as an add-on element to enrich the whole plot. But it seems like Illumination wants to do it the other round, they probably want to use humour as the base selling factor and then highlight the story with an underlying intriguing message.
