National Cinemedia, Inc. (NCMI)

[Harry Winston]

This is a Forbes article published today.

Prior the 2009 J.J. Abrams-directed reboot, the biggest opening weekend for a Star Trek movie was the pre-Thanksgiving 1996 launch of Star Trek: First Contact. Buoyed by strong reviews, an usual PG-13 rating that promised a darker and more violent action melodrama and a campaign that successfully sold the flick as a combo of the two most popular Trek flicks (The Wrath of Khan and The Voyage Home), the film opened with a whopping $30 million and legged it to $90 million domestic. Just two months later, a re-release of the first Star Wars movie, celebrating its 20th anniversary, opened with $35 million in January of 1997.

The Star Wars: Special Edition debut was impressive for any number of reasons, not least of which because the old Star Wars snagged a bigger opening weekend than the biggest debut for any "new" Star Trek movie. If there was any doubt that Star Wars was still a viable IP ripe for the plundering, the "Special Edition" reissues of the Star Wars trilogy earned $471 million worldwide in early 1997. George Lucas' long-fabled prequel flicks began dropping two years later. Phantom Menace, Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith eventually earned (sans reissues) $2.425 billion combined on a total production spend of $345 million.

Flash forward to September of 2011, when Walt Disney gave The Lion King a 3-D conversion and re-released it into theaters. Despite the 1994 animated blockbuster having sold 32 million VHS tapes since 1995 and 11.9 million DVDs since 2003, The Lion King 3-D opened with $30 million on its opening weekend. It earned $94 million domestic and $91.3 million overseas and was the third-biggest movie of the season behind Paranormal Activity 3 and Puss in Boots. The Lion King 3-D's success led to a mini-surge in Disney animated theatrical re-releases, but none of them (Beauty and the Beast, Finding Nemo and Monsters, Inc. in 2012) matched The Lion King's success.

Whatever a massive debut for a reanimated remake of The Lion King means in a macro sense, the micro of it is that folks just really like watching The Lion King in theaters. The mixed-negative reviews that argued that this Jon Favreau-directed version was essentially a re-painted and buttoned down version of the same movie you saw in 1994 and then bought in 1995, weren't so much pans as reassurances. This is a slightly new version of The Lion King, with a new cast comprised of the likes of Donald Glover, Beyonce Knowles-Carter and Seth Rogen, complete with James Earl Jones reprising his role as Mufasa. But it was still The Lion King.

Just as the 1997 "Special Edition" reissues of Star Wars underlined the potential value of "new" Star Wars content, so too did the 2011 3-D reissue of The Lion King highlight the potential encased in this specific animated IP. And once Favreau proved with The Jungle Book that you could essentially make an animated movie filled with animals and wildlife that looked "photo real," it was only a matter of time before Simba, Mufasa and Scar got the same treatment. Walt Disney's remake of The Lion King opened yesterday with a boffo $78.5 million Friday gross, including $23 million in Thursday previews. Including overseas grosses, it has already earned $270.5 million worldwide.

Here's a repeat of the last two sentences.

Walt Disney's remake of The Lion King opened yesterday with a boffo $78.5 million Friday gross, including $23 million in Thursday previews. Including overseas grosses, it has already earned $270.5 million worldwide.