'The Lion King' Early Box Office Tracking Predicts A Massive Opening Weekend

We're still eight weeks out from the release of Disney's "live-action" remake of The Lion King, but audiences are already very excited to see what the visual effects extravaganza has to offer. The early box office tracking for The Lion King is predicting a huge opening weekend for the remake, one that would probably give it one of the biggest opening weekends of the summer, and likely the entire year.

The Lion King box office tracking at this point has pegged an opening weekend somewhere between $180 million on the lower end up to $230 million for a more generous prediction. That's not all that surprising, especially since Fandango recently polled users and the movie was picked as the most anticipated summer family movie, and that's ahead of Toy Story 4 and The Secret Life of Pets 2. Plus, considering the late July 19, 2019 release date, it will have little to no competition in the family film arena for the rest of the summer.

If these projections hold true, The Lion King would break the opening weekend record for July, which currently belongs to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2. Even if you adjusted for inflation of ticket prices, The Dark Knight would have a $201 million opening weekend, meaning The Lion King would have a good chance at smashing that record too.

More than likely, these numbers are only going to rise as audiences become more aware of the movie's arrival as the release date gets closer. After all, the very first trailer released during Thanksgiving weekend last year hit nearly 225 million views in the first 24 hours. It has only been surpassed by Avengers: Endgame since then. So excitement was high for this movie months ago, and will undoubtedly increase as time goes on.

One could argue that Disney's live-action remakes this year have left plenty to be desired. Dumbo wasn't quite as big of a hit as Disney hoped it would be, and even though reviews for Aladdin are fairly solid, the movie looks to be only half as successful as the projected opening for The Lion King. But when it comes to The Lion King, there's clearly much more excitement for the remake, mostly because of the stunning visual effects used to bring photorealistic animals to life. Of course, we haven't actually seen them talking (or singing) much yet, so that could look weird when all is said and done. We'll find out soon enough. Stay tuned.