‘Zootopia 2’ crosses $1B mark

NEW YORK Zootopia regained the No spot at the domestic box office with million in its third weekend of release according to studio estimates Sunday as The Walt Disney Co animated sequel became the year s second film to gross billion worldwide With Avatar Fire and Ash arriving Friday it was a relatively quiet weekend in theaters There were no major new releases leaving holdovers Zootopia and Five Nights at Freddy s to duke it out for the top spot The edge went to Zootopia which has fleetly amassed billion in global ticket sales thanks significantly to its enormous success in China There it s grossed million making Zootopia the biggest Hollywood hit in the country in years The only other Hollywood title to surpass billion worldwide was Disney s Lilo Stitch billion The highest grossing movie of the year though is the Chinese blockbuster Ne Zha which collected nearly billion just in China In its second weekend of release the Universal Pictures and Blumhouse Productions sequel Five Nights at Freddy s collected million a brutal drop of from its above-expectations debut Still with a domestic total of million the million production is a big win for Blumhouse adding another horror franchise to its portfolio The weekend s bulk notable new release was James L Brook s Ella McCay his first directed film in years Ella McCay earned a scant million from locations making it one of the year s worst wide releases But box-office expectations weren t high coming in from Ella McCay a comic drama about a -year-old woman newcomer Emma Mackey who becomes governor of her home state Reviews fresh on Rotten Tomatoes were poor and the kind of award-winning comic dramas movies that Brooks Terms of Endearment Broadcast News has long specialized in in the present day seldom find large audiences in theaters Ella McCay featuring a supporting cast including Jamie Lee Curtis Ayo Edebiri and Woody Harrelson cost million to make With overall ticket sales on the year running close to even with last year s disappointing grosses according to Comscore material Hollywood will be hoping the coming holiday corridor traditionally the busiest moviegoing period of the year ends on a high note Movies on tap include Avatar Fire and Ash The SpongeBob Movie Search for SquarePants Marty Supreme Anaconda and Song Sung Blue