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Will Disney's Beauty and the Beast Enter $1 Billion Club?

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The Walt Disney Company’s (DIS - Free Report) live-action remake “Beauty and the Beast” topped the charts with domestic second weekend collections of $88.3 million. This marked the fourth biggest second weekend collections in the history of Hollywood.

In the opening weekend, the movie garnered $170 million. “Beauty and the Beast” not only surpassed the analyst expectations but also outdid Disney’s own estimates. Analyst had expected the movie to generate in the range of $130–$150 million in the opening weekend. While Disney had earlier forecasted the movie to garner $120 million in the opening weekend but raised the estimates to as much as $150 million on Mar 17.

In the first 10 days, the movie had garnered $317 million domestically, while worldwide box office collections were pegged at $690 million. Currently, it is almost certain that the movie will cross $400 million at domestic box office. If it continues to perform at the same level then it may cross $500 million domestically and $1 billion at the global box office.

Disney’s strategy of making old animated movies into live-action remakes are paying off well. The company’s earlier live-action remakes like “The Jungle Book”, “Cinderella”, “Maleficent” and “Alice in Wonderland” had garnered $967 million, $544 million, $759 million and more than $1 billion, respectively, worldwide. We believe Disney’s live-action remakes will continue to taste success beyond “Beauty and the Beast” as the company is working on remakes of “Dumbo" as well as “Mulan”.

Disney’s shares have increased nearly 21.6% in the past six months, surpassing the Zacks categorized Media Conglomerates industry’s gain of 19.6% primarily due to robust performance of movie business. Stellar box-office performance of “Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” helped the company set a new Hollywood record. Disney’s Studios touched $7 billion mark at the global box office in 2016, surpassing a collection of $6.89 billion in the previous year.

We note that fiscal 2016 has been a magnificent year for the company’s movie business. Four of its releases, namely, “Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, “Captain America: Civil War”, “Finding Dory” and “Zootopia” surpassed the $1 billion mark, each.

Disney, which shares space with Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. (FOXA - Free Report) , Time Warner Inc. and Comcast Corporation (CMCSA - Free Report) , carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) at the moment. You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

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