Disney And Universal Help Boost Summer Box Office, Set Up 'Collision Course' With Fox

Over the weekend, Universal (Comcast Corporation CMCSA)'s "The Secret Life of Pets" was unleashed into theaters and early $70 million estimates proved to be off…way off. It looks like the animated film from the people behind "Despicable Me" and "Minions" will net over $103 million, which is just $12 million less than the studio's little yellow money-machines made last summer in this period.

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Walt Disney Co DIS's "Finding Dory" also put up strong numbers with another $20 million banked, which brings its total to over $420 million. In the grand scheme, that puts it close to knocking off "The Lion King" and "Toy Story 3," which had long been perched as Disney's most profitable films (one among traditionally animated films and the other among CGI based films). By this time next week, "Dory" will have swum to the top.

Yet, the animal circus isn't over as Twenty-First Century Fox Inc FOX FOXA's "Ice Age" franchise will return to theaters in a few weeks. While "Ice Age: Collision Course" will go head-to-head with Paramount (Viacom, Inc. VIA VIAB's "Star Trek Beyond," if this season has taught analysts anything it's to not under-estimate the family marketplace in the summer. "Ice Age" is a bankable and long-lasting franchise and could help summer's second half prove to be more successful than the first.