Hobbs & Shaw dethrones Lion King at US box office

Los Angeles

THE Fast & Furious spin-off Hobbs & Shaw dethroned The Lion King in North American theatres over the weekend with a US$60 million opening, industry watcher Exhibitor Relations said on Monday.

The latest installment in the long-running Fast & Furious franchise features former professional wrestler Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jason Statham facing off against "cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist" Idris Elba.

It ended the box office reign of The Lion King, a remake of Disney's 1994 animated film that employs hyper-realistic computer-generated images with a voice cast including Donald Glover as Simba and Beyonce as Nala, together with Seth Rogen, Chiwetel Ejiofor and James Earl Jones.

The Lion King earned US$38.5 million on its third weekend, topping director Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood, which has earned rave reviews and took in US$20 million.

Once Upon a Time - the ninth of the 10 movies that Tarantino has said he will make before retiring - is set in Tinseltown in 1969 and features Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Margot Robbie and Al Pacino.

In fourth place was Spider-Man: Far from Home - which continues where Avengers: Endgame left off and stars Tom Holland as the Marvel superhero - raked in US$7.9 million.

Toy Story 4 was fifth, pocketing another US$7.3 million on its seventh weekend in theatres.

The Disney/Pixar animation once again features the voices of Tom Hanks (Woody) and Tim Allen (Buzz Lightyear), stalwarts of a franchise that began in 1995.

Rounding out the weekend's top 10 were: Yesterday (US$2.5 million); The Farewell (US$2.5 million); Crawl (US$2.2 million); Aladdin (US$2.1 million); and Annabelle Comes Home (US$880,000). AFP