The Jungle Book is King of the Box Office With Massive Opening Weekend Gross

Disney's new movie of The Jungle Book has swung to the top of the box office this weekend. The film, which mixes live-action with cutting-edge 3D animation, has scored the second highest ever April opening, pulling in a massive $103.6 million.

The weekend gross goes beyond estimated figures, which, as Collider notes, had the film topping out at a maximum of $85 million. The movie is now second only to Furious 7 in terms of an April opening. Worldwide, it has to date made $290.9 million.

The film, which is directed by Iron Man's Jon Favreau and based on the classic stories of Rudyard Kipling, has been backed by extremely strong reviews and much acclaim for its use of 3D and CGI. The all-star voice cast includes Bill Murray, Ben Kingsley, Idris Elba, Lupita Nyong'o, Scarlett Johansson, and Christopher Walken, plus newcomer Neel Sethi as Mowgli.

The Jungle Book is the latest classic fairy tale that Disney has retooled for modern audiences. Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland earned more than $1 billion in 2010, and a sequel is due in cinemas next month. Further down the line, Beauty and the Beast, starring Emma Watson, is set for release in March 2017.

What the success of The Jungle Book means for the rival adaptation from Warner is unclear. That film has already been moved back an entire year to October 2018, and a report in Variety quotes a source as saying that the popularity of the Disney film "could spell disaster" for the Warner version.