The Lion King beats Moneyball to hold on to US Box Office number one

by Beth Squires

It just goes to show that not even Brad Pitt can beat a Disney classic. His latest release ‘Moneyball’ was unable to push ‘The Lion King’ into second place in the US box office charts this weekend.

It was the second consecutive week at the top spot for the animated film, which has been re-released in 3D, holding off new releases ‘Moneyball’ and ‘Dolphin Tale’, which rounded out the top 3.

‘The Lion King’ took in £14.3m ($22.1m) across the pond this week, while Pitt and Jonah Hill’s baseball film took £13.3m ($20.6m) - only marginally more than family movie ‘Dolphin Tale’ at £13.1m ($20.3m).

This week’s US box office top five also included new release ‘Abduction’ starring Taylor Lautner, which brought in £7.2m ($11.2m), and ‘Killer Elite’ starring Robert De Niro and Jason Statham, which made £6.1m ($9.5m).

First released in 1994, Disney brought ‘The Lion King’ back to cinemas in 2002, before this 3D outing. Their head of distribution, Dave Hollis, told the BBC that the success has surpassed Disney’s expectations – it’s made a total of £39.9m ($61.7m) since release - so they’ll be letting the film play in cinemas longer than the originally planned two week run.

I think it’s safe to say we’ll be seeing lots more 3D releases of Disney classics in the future.