As the summer box office starts to slow down, Dora & the Lost City of Gold fell in line exactly where tracking had it, earning $17 million, Box Office Mojo is reporting. It was a decent enough start for the live-action adaptation of the Nick cartoon, which ages its lead character up and sends her on an adventure to rescue her parents.
Critics were very warm towards Dora, giving it a 80% “freshness” rating over at Rotten Tomatoes, which is great for a theatrical take on an animated series. Helping matters was director James Bobin–who had previously helmed 2011’s The Muppets as well as 2016’s Alice Through the Looking Glass–and an appealing marketing campaign which targeted both current kids and adults who had grown up with Dora in their living rooms.
Where does Dora go from here? Potentially not very far. School is rapidly approaching (many kids in the nation are already back in class), and The Angry Birds Movie 2 (which is actually getting good reviews!) opens on Wednesday, and will take away a good portion of the film’s audience. Still, Dora cost a fairly modest $49 million to make, so it’s going to be just fine once home video sales are brought into play.
Elsewhere at the box office, the extremely leggy Toy Story 4 finally overcame Toy Story 3 to become the biggest in the franchise. With a current gross of $419 million, it’s also the third highest grossing Pixar film ever, behind only Finding Dory and Incredibles 2. Despite reports that Pixar is going to “focus on more original movies” in the future, there’s almost certainly no way they’re going to stop producing sequels as well. The numbers are simply too lucrative for Disney to want them to cease.
And speaking of lucrative, The Lion King has proven to be as successful as many were expecting it to be. Not only has it made $473 million stateside (where it will surpass Beauty and the Beast to claim the title for Disney’s biggest remake in a matter of weeks), but it’s also got a global tally of $1.3 billion. For those keeping score, that’s enough to make it the 12th biggest ever worldwide, and it’s still got a long way to go before it’s done.