Kung Fu Panda 4 still kicking the Kwisatz Haderach's butt at the box office
For the second week running, audiences have favored Kung Fu Panda 4 over Dune Part Two
It turns out that there’s only one force in the universe that can stand tall over Paul Muad’dib Atreides, Lisan al-Gaib, Kwisatz Haderach, Duke of Arrakis: A heavyset panda bear with a taste for dumplings. At least, that’s the tale told by this weekend’s box office returns, which reveal that the fourth Kung Fu Panda movie is expected to beat Dune 2 handedly for the second week running, because, say what you like about Denis Villeneuve’s gorgeous, slow-moving, hyper-violent adaptation of Frank Herbert’s classic sci-fi novel: You’re not getting a Milk-Duds-powered second grader to sit through that shit.
This is per Variety, which reports that Po the Dragon Warrior will hold steady at its position at the top of the box office, bringing in about $31.5 million at the domestic box office this weekend, bringing the film’s total above $100 million for its theatrical run to date. Dune 2 has more than doubled that domestic total, but it had an extra weekend in which to do so, having opened on March 1; this weekend, it’s expected to trail a bit behind Panda, having already brought in $8.1 million on Friday night.
Both Po and Paul, meanwhile, handily kicked the ass of Mark Wahlberg, whose new dog movie Arthur The King is the biggest new release of the week, and which is expected to open in third place behind the established films (And in front of horror film Imaginary and Angel Studios’ Cabrini.) That’s what you get when you go up against an all-seeing prophet capable of plunging the universe into a blood-soaked orgy of interstellar violence—or, more importantly, an animated franchise that’s spent the last 16 years spreading across theaters, television, toys, and that one Dave And Buster’s game we’re so good at that we always walk out of that place with our pockets loaded down with 100-ticket Tootsie Rolls. (But we digress.)