After floundering with Alice: Through The looking Glass at the beginning of the month Disney is back at the helm after a spectacular $136.2 million opening weekend for Finding Dory. In this Pixar coproduction  Golden Globe nominee Ellen DeGeneres returns to voice the title character. As she begins to recover from the short term amnesia which provided much of the comic relief in 2003’s  Golden Globe winner Finding Nemo, Dory has a flash of memory that sends her on a quest to find her parents in Morro Bay, California. Golden Globe nominee Albert Brooks lends his voice again as Marlin, Nemo’s father, while  Golden Globe nominee Ed O’Neill signs on as a crotchety octopus and  Golden Globe winner Idris Elba appears as hard-nosed sea lion named Fluke. Dory ‘s strong opening made it the second biggest June launch in history, after last year’s Jurassic World, and nearly doubled the original Nemo’s $70 million launch.

Dory’s cast of aquatic superstars had a bit of trouble crossing the seven seas and was able to find a mere $50 million in 29 foreign territories. Australia was good for a tidy $7.6 million, and $3.4 million in Russia. It had a record $3.5 million opening in Argentina, the biggest ever for Disney/Pixar in the South American nation, doubly impressive because it debuted during the peak of this summer’s Copa America soccer tournament. China however served up a disappointing $17.5 million, well below returning Middle Kingdom champion Warcraft.

Legendary Picture’s adaptation of Blizzard’s billion dollar videogame series racked up another $28.3 million in China this weekend, taking its Middle Kingdom cumulative to an astonishing $205 million. A domestic take of $6.5 million and an additional $17.7 million from Universal controlled foreign territories brings the picture’s global cume to a respectable $377.6 million. A rumored videogame spinoff of the film, which may be released as an expansion to World Of Warcraft, could take Blizzard’s take in the venture to significantly greater heights.

While Dory had the family market covered Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Kevin Hart’s buddy spy comedy Central Intelligence did a decent job of shoring up the twenty five and over crowd in the US. It made $34.5 million in its launch and added $6.8 million in 24 minor territories, to reach an opening weekend cume of $41.3 million.

Meanwhile The Conjuring 2 moved into several new key territories, and earned $41.9 million in all from its 57 foreign markets.  Its UK launch scared up a very solid $6.7 million, a Spanish outing netted $1.7 million. In the US it finished at $15.5 million. So far this $40 million contender from New Line has made a global cume of $187.6 million.

On the home front again Lionsgate’s Now You See Me 2, which stars Jesse Eisenberg, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Lizzy Chaplan, Daniel Radcliffe, Michael Caine and Mark Ruffalo, dropped into fourth, making just $9.6 million. Its foreign total came to $15 million, and brought its worldwide cume $91.1 million.

Next weekend we’ll see if Finding Dory can survive Independence Day: Resurgence’s global invasion, and keep track of Matthew McConaughey’s civil war drama Free State of Jones, as well as Nicholas Winding Refn’s The Neon Demon. 

See the latest world box office estimates: worldwide_weekend_estimates_june_19_2016.pdf