Box Office: Beauty and the Beast smashes March box office records

Beauty and the Beast twirls into the record books…

It seems most of the world took up the invitation to “be our guest” this weekend as Disney’s latest live-action remake, Beauty and the Beast, has shattered box office records across the globe to rule the charts. (via Box Office Mojo)

While many had predicted a big opening for the new version of the film, which stars Emma Watson and Dan Stevens in the title roles, but it surpassed even bigger estimates by taking in a whopping $170million which could yet rise closer to $180million when final tallies are in later today. That gross marks the largest opening of the year so far, the biggest PG-rated film opening (topping Finding Dory‘s previous record of $135million), the 7th biggest opening weekend of all time, the 4th largest Saturday gross of all time and the 6th biggest Sunday ever. It also sees the film become the highest-grossing weekend ever in March, surpassing the previous record made last year by Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, which took $166million.

Overseas, the film brought in an estimated gross of $180million to bring its worldwide opening in at $350million – opening at No.1 in all but three of the markets it was released in this weekend, the biggest came from the UK with around $22.8million grossed, marking the biggest PG-opening ever.

Kong: Skull Island fell from the top spot with the Beauty opening and dropped 53% to gross $28.85million on its second weekend. It’s domestic total now sits at $110million which despite being less than 2014’s Godzilla at the same point is still a solid effort from the big monkey. Across the globe, the film has now grossed $259.3million.

Hugh Jackman’s final appearance as Wolverine, Logan, continues to rake in the cash with another $17.5million grossed this weekend, which brings its domestic total to almost $185million. Globally the film now stands at $524.1million, making it the highest grossing Wolverine spin-off of the three films (as well as in the US).

In other new releases, The Belko Experiment earned around $4million from 1,341 cinemas on its debut, while T2 Trainspotting opened in five theatres and earned around $180,000 ($36,000 per-theatre-average) and expands wider next week.

This weekend also saw the debut of Terence Malick’s latest Song to Song, which stars Michael Fassbender, Ryan Gosling, Rooney Mara and Natalie Portman, in four cinemas and earned around $53,945 ($13,486 per-theatre-average)