The Boss Baby Bests Beast, Barely, as Box

Office No. 1
By BROOKS BARNES APRIL 2, 2017

Alec Baldwin voices the title character, right, with Miles Bakshi as Tim, in The Boss Baby.
Credit Dreamworks Animation

LOS ANGELES Show business rule of thumb: Never underestimate a tough-talking tot.

Going into the weekend, most box office analysts predicted that Beauty and the Beast would
easily remain the No. 1 movie in North America. One challenger, The Boss Baby, had received
negative reviews. (The Los Angeles Times deemed it a rancid diaper.) Another new arrival,
Ghost in the Shell, had been written off as a contender after becoming embroiled in a
whitewashing casting controversy.

But The Boss Baby in the tradition of Look Whos Talking, Stewie from Family Guy
and the cigar-chomping Baby Herman from Who Framed Roger Rabbit proved enormously
popular, pushing past Belle of Beauty and the Beast to take in roughly $49 million. Theaters
far from the coasts (Indianapolis, Denver) saw especially strong turnout, according to the films
distributor, 20th Century Fox.

Produced by DreamWorks Animation, The Boss Baby cost at least $200 million to make and
market. It has taken in an additional $59 million overseas. Alec Baldwin, riding a wave of
popularity for his Saturday Night Live portrayal of President Trump, gave voice to the baby.
Beauty and the Beast (Disney) had $47.5 million in ticket sales, for a three-week domestic
total of $395 million and a global one of $876 million, according to comScore, which compiles
box office data.

Fizzling in third place was Ghost in the Shell, a live-action version of a Japanese manga by
Shirow Masamune. It collected about $19 million not nearly enough given production and
marketing costs of at least $150 million. Ghost in the Shell (DreamWorks Pictures and
Paramount Pictures) was also weak overseas, where it took in about $40 million.

Casting Scarlett Johansson in a role originally played by an Asian actor was one misstep. The
marketing may have been another; Paramounts campaign was visually arresting but failed to
broaden the films appeal beyond older male science-fiction fans. And the film was in many
ways a mishmash, leading to weak reviews and word of mouth, as evidenced by CinemaScore
exit polls.