A 17-Year-Old Film Topped the Box Office This Weekend, and You’ll Never Guess Which (Actually You Probably Can)

This weekend’s box office totals were interesting in a number of ways, first, in that the clear winner was a seventeen-year-old rerelease, second, in that it made almost three times as much as the next highest grossing weekend opener, and third, that it was the first hand-animated movie to top a weekend box office in two years. Yes, I’m talking about the 3-D rerelease of The Lion King.

This gives The Lion King‘s 3-D rerelease a higher opening weekend gross than The Princess and the Frog, the last hand-animated movie to top an opening weekend. From Cartoon Brew:

3D screenings of the film accounted for an impressive 92% of the gross. The 1994 feature, which remained the highest-grossing hand-drawn feature of all-time even before this re-release, is the first number one hand-drawn animated feature at the American box office since the theatrical run of Disney’sThe Princess and the Frog, which held the top position on December 11-13, 2009 with with $24.2M.

It certainly seems like rereleasing an old family film appeals to a lot of moviegoers out there, from the parents who know they’ll be going to a movie that will captivate their kids for two hours, to the kids who burned out their VHS copy of the thing and are now excited to see it all on a big screen again. I’m by no means a big fan of the 3-D trend, but I’m more than willing to put up with it if it means more classic films back in theaters.

(via Cartoon Brew.)