'The Lion King' has a 65.19 crore weekend in India

Simba and Mufasa are having a gala time in India. Disneys new production of "The Lion King" opened to a weekend collection of over Rs 65 crore at the domestic box office.

Jon Favreau has recreated the 1994 Disney classic of the same name, to bring back the adventures of Simba, the lion cub who is to succeed his father Mufasa as King of the Pride Lands. Favreau's film updates the classic tale with photo-realistic and computer-generated animation. The filmmaker had earlier helmed the 2016 global blockbuster, "The Jungle Book".

The film is about how Simba rises up to the occasion despite several attempts to bring him down by his villainous uncle Scar. It opened in India across 2,140 screens on July 19 in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu.

The three-day gross box-office collection for the Disney film stands at Rs 65.19 crore.

While, the film's opening day gross was Rs 13.17 crore, nett figures for day one stood at Rs 11.06 crore. The second day gross collection figure was Rs 22.8 crore.

With the upswing in numbers, "The Lion King" has scaled the third all-time opening record in India, after "Avengers: Endgame" and "Avengers: Infinity War".

"'The Lion King' sets the box office on fire... Trends much, much better than 'The Jungle Book'," tweeted trade analyst Taran Adarsh, adding: "The Lion King: is the only non-Avenger film to have a great opening weekend in India. Top three opening weekend business of Hollywood films in India -- 'Avengers: Endgame' -- Rs. 158.65 crore (2019); 'Avengers: Infinity War' -- Rs. 94.30 crore (2018); 'The Lion King' -- Rs 54.75 crore (2019)."

The star-studded voice cast of the original Hollywood version includes Donald Glover, Beyonce Knowles, Seth Rogen, Alfre Woodard, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Billy Eichner, John Kani and John Oliver. Actor James Earl Jones reprises his role of Mufasa from the original.

The Hindi version has Bollywood superstar Shah Rukh Khan voicing Mufasa and his son Aryan as Simba.