‘Jurassic World’ still king of the box office

LOS ANGELES — The dinosaurs of “Jurassic World” stayed atop the cinematic food chain this weekend, snapping up another $54.5 million to keep Pixar’s “Inside Out” in second place at the North American box office, figures showed Monday.

“Jurassic World” completed its third weekend in US and Canadian cinemas with an overall haul of $500 million, shattering US and worldwide records, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The fourth film in the popular “Jurassic Park” series, “Jurassic World” returns to the island featured in the first instalment. It follows an experiment to create an especially mean dinosaur and, unsurprisingly, things quickly go awry.

The film just bested “Inside Out”, the well-received animated tale depicting the emotions inside the mind of a young girl, which pulled in another $52.3 million in its second week.

The movie — which is generating major Oscar buzz — has so far taken in $185 million in North America.

“Ted 2”, the sequel to Seth MacFarlane’s 2012 hugely successful raunchy comedy starring Mark Wahlberg about an antisocial slacker teddy bear that comes to life, opened in third place at $33.5 million.

In addition to mediocre reviews, perhaps the shock value of seeing a raunchy stuffed animal has worn off a bit.

“It’s hard to maintain that hyper level of excitement once people have seen the talking Teddy bear,” Rentrak’s Senior Media Analyst Paul Dergarabedian said. “In comedy it’s about inventiveness, newness and the shock value of something original.”

Universal’s domestic distribution head, Nick Carpou, said that the positive response from exit polls indicates a promising life for the movie in the weeks ahead.

“We could have had a higher gross, but we get the gross we get. It was a very competitive marketplace this weekend,” said Carpou, who noted that the first film’s gross was a massive surprise to the studio.

Dergarabedian marvelled at the consistency of “Jurassic World” and “Inside Out”. “These are no flash-in-the-pan movies. Both are delivering exactly what audiences want,” he said.

Another new film, “Max”, about a boy who adopts an ex-military dog that had served in Afghanistan, opened in fourth place with $12.2 million, despite scathing reviews and a low 38 per cent critics’ approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Comedy “Spy” grabbed $7.9 million in ticket sales for the fifth spot. The film follows a CIA analyst (Melissa McCarthy) who leaves her desk job to go deep undercover to avenge former partner (Jude Law).

Earthquake thriller “San Andreas” starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson took home $5.4 million for sixth spot. Coming-of-age film “Dope” came in seventh place with $2.8 million.

The prequel and third iteration of the “Insidious” supernatural horror films, “Insidious: Chapter 3”, got $2 million in sales for the eighth spot. 

Dystopian action flick “Mad Max: Fury Road” starring Charlize Theron got $1.8 million in ticket sales for the ninth spot.

Rounding out the top 10 was “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, which pulled in another $1.7 million, bringing its total haul to $452.5 million since its official US release in early May.