By Chris Kavan - 02/23/14 at 10:08 PM CT
Although none of the new movies could manage to topple the might that is The Lego Movie, even with a somewhat lackluster weekend, 2014 continued to outperform 2013 (which got off to a notoriously slow start before rebounding mightily during the spring/summer period). Hopefully this year continues to impress, but the new movies better start stepping up soon, or it won't be long before the box office starts to suffer, because you can't depend on one good film to carry it along.
1) THE LEGO MOVIE
Was there really any doubt over what movie was going to be on top once again? The Lego Movie dipped a light 37% to take in $31.45 million and give it a new total of $183.16 million. That is the second-highest third weekend for an animated film, only behind Shrek 2 ($37.9 million). With The Lego Movie going strong, it should top $200 million by next weekend. And, in a move that should surprise absolutely no one, Warner Bros. has announced a sequel (currently scheduled to arrive Memorial Day 2017). I guess that means everything is awesome for the studio.
2)
3 DAYS TO KILL
With a premise that made me think of a more generic version of Taken, Kevin Costnar's 3 Days to Kill opened with a $12.3 million weekend. That is well behind Taken and also a bit lower than director Luc Besson's last film The Family ($14.03 million). At least it can boast that it topped other recent Euro-centric films like Colombiana ($10.3 million) and From Paris with Love ($8.2 million). Still, that's little consolation for a film that earned just a "B" Cinemascore and is likely to barely cross its $28 million budget before it falls out of the top 10.
3)
POMPEII
If 3 Days to Kill was a disappointment, Pompeii was an outright disaster. Paul W.S. Anderson is probably wishing he had stuck to (loosely) adapting zombie video games into movies, as the $100 million budgeted Pompeii only brought in an anemic $10.01 million at the box office. If you care comparing it to most disaster movies, it's a massive failure - bringing in less than half of Poseidon's $22.5 million - a film that is considered a bomb itself. As bad as it sounds, it actually opened better than 2014 films The Legend of Hercules ($8.9 million) and I, Frankenstein ($8.6 million) - and also higher than Anderson's Three Musketeers ($8.7 million). But that's a sad consolation prize as the film better hope on a decent International presence if it wants to avoid complete disaster. The opening suggests Pompeii is only going to have about a $25 million total domestically.
4)
ROBOCOP
With Valentine's Day weekend over, RoboCop was the top dog out of all the new movies that came out last week. But the remake can't crow too loud, as it still dropped nearly 57%, bringing in $9.4 million and raising its total to just $43.6 million (still less than half its $100 million budget). That drop is similar to the 59% A Good Day to Die Hard dropped its second weekend - and if it follows the same trajectory, it will wind up with over $60 million - but well short of $70 million.
5)
THE MONUMENTS MEN
After three weeks out, The Monuments Men dipped about 48%, taking in $8.1 million and giving the film a new $58.05 million total. That's a solid total for a film that did so poorly with critics - it's still on pace to at least get to its $70 million budget.
Outside the top five: Though it is outside the top 20 films, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire still crossed one more major milestone. Bringing in $320,000, it now stands at $423,628,000 - that tops Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($423,315,812) and is now one of the top 10 grossing films of all time (non-adjusted gross, of course). It will likely add a little more to that total, but won't be enough to move up on the list any higher.
Next weekend, we have the "Taken-on-a-plane" premise when Liam Neeson goes Non-Stop. We also have the movie that is selling out whole theaters (thanks to some healthy interest from those of a religious nature) Son of God - essentially a compact version of the popular "The Bible" series. We'll see if that's enough to unseat The Lego Movie - but I doubt it.
Comments
