Despite horrendous reviews going into the weekend, the Michael Bay-produced reintroduction of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Paramount), starring Megan Fox, Will Arnett, William Fichtner, scored big at the box office this weekend, taking in an estimated $65 million from 3,845 North American theaters. That’s the fourth-biggest August opening behind last week’s Guardians of the Galaxy record-setter, previous record holder The Bourne Ultimatum and 2001’s Rush Hour 2. The Turtles added another $28.7 million from its overseas openings for a global opening total of $93.7 million.
With a reported budget of $125 million, it probably won’t be much of a surprise that Paramount has already announced a sequel to the movie, which will once again be produced by Michael Bay and his Platinum Dunes partners Andrew Form and Brad Fuller with a screenplay written by Josh Appelbaum & André Nemec. There’s no word whether director Jonathan Liebesman will return, but they already have a release date of June 3, 2016 picked out for the sequel. This means that it will open the same weekend as Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg’s R-rated animated comedy Sausage Party and one week after both X-Men: Apocalypse from Fox and Alice in Wonderland: Through the Looking Glass from Disney.
Marvel Studios’ latest blockbuster, the James Gunn-directed outer space adventure Guardians of the Galaxy, starring Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista and more, tried but failed to hold the top spot against the Turtles, dropping to second place with $41.5 million, down 56%. It has grossed $176 million domestically since opening last weekend, which means it will be pulling ahead of the domestic grosses of the original Thor and Captain America: The First Avenger in the next few days. More importantly, it has grossed $313 million globally in its first ten days. It added another $40.1 million overseas this weekend where it opened in Australia, New Zealand, India and other territories with $30 million of the “Guardians'” global take so far accredited to its worldwide IMAX release.
You can check out the full weekend box office report over on ComingSoon.net.
