The box office race between Disney's prequel Mufasa: The Lion King and Paramount's sequel Sonic the Hedgehog 3 has just begun, but it's not too early to declare a winner. Opening weekend estimates for both films have Sonic 3 on track for the top spot with a $70.5 million debut, with Mufasa trailing in a distant second with $35 million. The cover.

Further widening the gap is the fact that Sonic the Hedgehog 3 was made on a relatively conservative budget of $122 million, while Mufasa: The Lion King cost north of $200 million. Directed by Barry Jenkins, the Disney film was put into production following the success of Jon Favreau's 2019 remake of The Lion King, which retold the story of the animated classic using near-photorealistic lions. Although The Lion King was a box office hit in 2019 — grossing $191 million in its opening weekend and more than $1.66 billion globally by the end of its theatrical run — reviews were very mixed and the film failed to leave much of a cultural impact. It's not too much of a surprise that "Mufasa" failed already low opening projections of $55-65 million.

Paramount learned the lesson early on with its Sonic the Hedgehog film franchise that more "realistic" looking animation isn't necessarily better. The reaction to the initial trailer for the first film in the series was so extreme that it led to a a rushed redesign of Sonic to more closely resemble his cartoonish appearance in the video games. From that early pace, though, the movies have been consistently grossing, with Sonic 3 falling just short of 2022's Sonic the Hedgehog 2's $72.1 million opening weekend.