Box office: It Chapter Two feasts on fear of top spot for second week with $40 million

Warner Bros. and New Line Cinema dominated the domestic box office for the second weekend in a row with It Chapter Two, which floated its way to an extra $40 million, bumping up the sequel's North American tally to $153 million. While that was enough to scare up the top spot, the film's sophomore outing couldn't muster the same success as its 2017 predecessor, which brought in over $60 million during its second outing in domestic theaters. Even so, Chapter Two was still able to secure the second-biggest horror debut in history last weekend, with $91 million.

In foreign markets, the follow-up (based on the 1986 novel by Stephen King) has made more than $169 million, bringing the movie's global total to $323.3 million. Combined with the first movie's financial returns, the bone-chilling franchise of just two installments has brought over $1 billion across the globe. That can buy Warner Bros. a lot of paper boats. In fact, the performance of both entries has been so lucrative that the studio could move beyond the original source material and produce another sequel or two. Why not? Bill Skarsgard's Pennywise is now a cinematic icon, and audiences would probably love to see him come back for another round of shape-shifting terror.

Credit: Warner Bros. Pictures

Helmed by Andy Muschietti, It Chapter Two takes place 27 years after the events of the first movie and finds the adult Losers' Club returning to Derry in an effort to kill Pennywise once and for all. James McAvoy (Bill Denbrough), Jessica Chastain (Beverly Marsh), and Bill Hader (Richie Tozier) lead the cast, but it's James Ransone who's been receiving a good chunk of acclaim for his neurotic performance as the grown-up version of Eddie Kaspbrak. Isaiah Mustafa (Mike Hanlon), Jay Ryan (Ben Hanscom), and Andy Bean (Stan Uris) play the rest of the Losers. That being said, the sequel does flash back quite a bit to the characters as kids, meaning that Sophia Lillis, Jaeden Martell, Finn Wolfhard, Chosen Jacobs, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Wyatt Oleff, and Jack Dylan Grazer all returned to play their Chapter One roles.

Elsewhere in the realm of box-office glory, Disney's photorealistic remake of The Lion King continues to stay relevant on the Top 5 list, with an extra $3.5 million to its domestic cache. Now in its ninth week, the family-friendly feature directed by Jon Favreau has roared its way to $534 million in North America. Thanks to more than $1 billion from foreign sales, the movie's global tally currently stands atop Pride Rock with $1.6 billion. For comparison, the 1994 animated original only managed a worldwide gross of $968 million.

(via Variety & Box Office Mojo)