Finding Nemo sequel remains on top in second week as alien invasion film sans Will Smith underwhelms with $41.6m opening weekend

Finding Dory overwhelmed the sputtering sequel Independence Day: Resurgence at the US box office, on its second weekend in theaters.

In its second week, the sequel to Finding Nemo easily remained on top with an estimated $73.2m, according to studio estimates on Sunday. That far surpassed the $41.6m opening of Resurgence, well off the pace of its 1996 original. The first Independence Day opened with $50.2m, or about $77m in inflation-adjusted figures.

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Of the week’s other debuts, the Blake Lively shark thriller The Shallows rode a wave of good reviews to a better-than-expected $16.7m for Sony. Matthew McConaughey’s civil war drama Free State of Jones, however, disappointed with just $7.7m for the upstart studio STX Entertainment.

In a weekend full of ups and downs, the opening of Independence Day was the most closely watched debut. Long pegged as one of 20th Century Fox’s tentpoles of the season, it had been expected to be one of the summer’s biggest films.

A proud popcorn movie, directed like the first Independence Day by Roland Emmerich, Resurgence brought back much of the original cast with the significant exception of Will Smith. The sequel doesn’t appear likely to match the $817.4m global haul of the original.

Chris Aronson, head of distribution for Fox, acknowledged the result was “on the lower side of our prognostications”. Resurgence did take in $102m abroad.

“We always expected international to carry the baton,” Aronson said.

Fox, perhaps smarting from the critical reaction to its recent release X-Men: Apocalypse, took the unusual move of not screening the film for critics before release. Such an approach comes with its own risks – even bad reviews can be good publicity – but Aronson maintained the strategy didn’t hurt the film’s release.

Resurgence, which cost $165m to produce, is yet another sequel to struggle this summer, joining the likes of Alice Through the Looking Glass and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows.

Along with the smaller horror film The Conjuring 2 ($86.9m in three weeks for Warner Bros), the acclaimed Finding Dory has been the major exception. After setting a record opening weekend for Pixar last weekend, the film’s cumulative domestic total is already a whopping $286.5m.

“We talk about sequel-itis, which may or may not be an actual affliction, but certainly of these many sequels released this summer and this year, the winners have been the rarity,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore.

“There’s definitely been a pushback from audiences for many of the sequels, including Independence Day.”

With the lucrative 4 July holiday weekend coming up, theaters were jammed with nearly every genre. The comedy option, Central Intelligence, starring Dwayne Johnson and Kevin Hart, held strongly in its second week, earning $18.4m.

In the crowded field, some gambles didn’t pay off. For Gary Ross’ Free State of Jones, in which McConaughey plays a Confederate deserter who led a revolt against the crumbling Confederacy, STX tried to open an adult-oriented, fall-style period film in the midst of popcorn season. The film cost $50m, though STX is on the hook for only a percentage of that.

Broad Green Pictures also attempted a curiously wide release for Nicolas Winding Refn’s poorly reviewed The Neon Demon, a surreal and stylish horror film in which Elle Fanning plays an aspiring model. Playing in 783 theaters, it made just under $607,000.

Next week, Steven Spielberg’s Roald Dahl adaptation The BFG, The Legend of Tarzan and The Purge: Election Year will join the crowd.