Weekend Box Office: Dory Finds a Big Box Office Win

Pixar's Finding Dory was guaranteed a big opening weekend, but the animated sequel scored even bigger than expected. The week's other new release performed well, too, leaving behind slim pickings for last week's hold-overs.

Finding Dory set a new record for the biggest opening for an animated film with gross ticket sales of $136 million. That was nearly double the opening-weekend take of Finding Nemo, and it marks the first time in quite awhile that a sequel has outperformed its predecessor.

Central Intelligence, the buddy comedy starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, came in second for the weekend with earnings of almost $35 million.

This week's hold-overs weren't up to the competition from this week's big new titles, and although last week's top three held on to the third through fifth spots, they did so in a particularly weak fashion. Last week's number-one movie, The Conjuring 2, fell off a big 62 percent to take in only $15 million, a much bigger drop than its predecessor experienced in its second weekend. Last week's number-two movie, Warcraft, fared much worse yet, dropping an astounding 73 percent and slipping to fifth place this week. It was passed by Now You See Me 2, last week's number three, which slipped a relatively small 56 percent and nailed down fourth place.