The Jungle Book pulverised a trio of box office lightweights, racking up $42.4 million to lead ticket sales for the third consecutive weekend. Disney’s live-action adaptation of Rudyard Kipling’s Mowgli stories has made $252m since opening last month. It should have no trouble becoming the fourth film this year to cross $300m domestically, joining the likes of Deadpool, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice and Zootopia.

Don’t look for this weekend’s new releases to number among those ranks. Keanu, an action-comedy send-up from Jordan Peele and Keegan-Michael Key, nabbed third place with $9.3m across 2,658 screens. The weak result is alleviated somewhat by the fact that the Warner Bros/New Line release cost a meagre $15m to produce. Reviews were strong, which could help the picture in the coming weeks when the competition gets fiercer.

If April is the cruellest month, then the last weekend of April is particularly cruel

Open Road’s Mother’s Day, an ensemble romantic comedy with Julia Roberts, Jennifer Aniston and Jason Sudeikis, collapsed at the multiplexes, eking out $8.3m across 3,035 locations to finish in fourth.

Moreover, Focus Features’ Ratchet and Clank struggled to leave an impression. The adaptation of the video game series about a fugitive robot and a cat-like alien only managed to pull in $4.8m from 2,891 locations.

Analysts and box office watchers weren’t expecting a lot from this crop, but the results were even worse than expected. Going into the weekend, tracking services had both Mother’s Day and Keanu debuting to north of $10m.

“If April is the cruellest month, then the last weekend of April is particularly cruel,” said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations.

Obviously there were also the holdovers. In its second weekend, Universal’s The Huntsman: Winter’s War dropped 52 per cent to $9.4m for a second place finish. Barbershop: The Next Cut rounded out the top five, earning $6.1m and bringing the Warner Bros and MGM comedy sequel’s domestic total to $44.7m.