‘Beauty and the Beast’ Sales Cross Three-Quarters of $1 Billion

By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Jan 12, 1:26PM EST · Published Mar 31, 6:30AM EDT

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‘Beauty and the Beast’ Sales Cross Three-Quarters of $1 Billion — © Thinkstock

[cnxvideo id=”625494″ placement=”ros”]Walt Disney Co.’s (NYSE: DIS) remake of “Beauty and the Beast” has sold $751 million in tickets worldwide. It was first released March 17 by Disney’s Buena Vista studio. Its production budget was $160 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

Ticket sales have been almost evenly split between domestic and international receipts. So far, domestic ticket sales are $341 million. “Beauty and the Beast” was released in the United States on March 29. International sales have totaled $409 million.

“Beauty and the Beast” is expected to be number one at the box office for the third weekend in a row. In its first weekend, it posted $175 million in domestic ticket sales as it was released in 4,210 theaters. This made it the most successful movie ever released during the month of March, and the seventh best opening of all time.

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Box Office Mojo reported about the ongoing strength of the film:

Last weekend Disney’s Beauty and the Beast dropped a mere 48.3%, resulting in the fourth largest second weekend of all-time. This weekend we’re expecting a relatively similar drop for a $48.8 million three-day, which is looking like it should be enough for a third weekend atop the box office and should push the film over $400 million domestically.

“Beauty and the Beast” is already the 41st most successful film of all time, based on domestic ticket sales. Ticket sales of $400 million would push it into 25th place, ahead of the animated film “Frozen,” which was released in November 2013.

“Beauty and the Beast” is based on a novel written in 1740 by French author Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve. Disney released an animated version of the film in 1991.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.