The Lion King Returns to the Throne

Yes, The Lion King was number one at the box office. No, you didn’t accidentally travel through time and end up back in 1994, so put away the flannel shirts and headbands, please. The Oscar-winning Disney classic earned $29.3 million in the three days since its 3-D rerelease, handily defeating last week’s number one movie, Contagion (weekend gross $14.8 million, total gross $44.1 million). Coming in third was new release Drive (weekend gross $11 million), with The Help (weekend gross $6.4 million, total gross $147.3 million) and Straw Dogs (opening weekend gross $5 million) rounding out the top five.

Also out in wide release was the Sarah Jessica Parker-starring romcom I Don’t Know How She Does It, which earned an unimpressive $4.5 million in its opening weekend. Gus Van Sant’s Restless ($17,285) and the documentary Connected: An Autoblogography About Love, Death & Technology ($17,100) were both newly out in limited release.

Seeing as most people have already seen The Lion King a few times since its original release, someone should be able to push the 17-year-old movie out of the top spot next weekend… right? Challenging The Lion King’s reign are Abduction, Dolphin Tale, Killer Elite and Moneyball. Out in limited release are Pearl Jam Twenty, The Double, Machine Gun Preacher, Puncture, A Bird of the Air, Red State, Toast, Thunder Soul and Weekend.