The problem with shoving three remakes into movie theaters for Valentine’s Day weekend is that no matter how interesting the marketing people try to make them look, and no matter how clever they are in trying to convince us that they’re any different than the original films, they simply won’t be better than the movie with the adorable, colorful toys that remind us of our childhoods. For the second weekend in a row, The LEGO Movie was the big winner at the box office, hauling in $48 million to bring its two-week gross to $129 million. At this rate, I wouldn’t even blink if they released the sequel next week.
So which of the remakes did the best this weekend while the original, creative movie made for kids and adults alike made them all look like Duplo? About Last Night still had a hell of an opening weekend, earning $27 million on the shoulders of Kevin Hart’s contract with Satan. Hart’s Ride Along also came in sixth place in its fifth week in the theaters, increasing its total gross to $116 million. What can I say, people just love having jokes screamed at them. The RoboCop remake finished in third with $21 million, which is decent enough, but with the film’s budget being $100 million, it’s very likely that we won’t be getting a RoboCop 2 remake.
Endless Love, which looked like someone locked Nicholas Sparks in a dark room with an Abercrombie & Fitch catalog, pulled in a respectable $13 million, which means that studios will still think Alex Pettyfer has leading man potential and he’ll eventually be given his own Marvel franchise. It’ll probably be The Punisher, because that title hasn’t truly suffered.
But the biggest dud of the weekend was Winter’s Tale, which was as critically-loathed as it was ambitious. The Colin Farrell angels and demons romance tale failed to crack the $8 million mark, which was probably just Russell Crowe’s catering bill. That’s a wicked food burn for a Monday morning, I know.
In fairness to the other films, it’s important to note that The LEGO Movie played on way more screens. Only RoboCop and The Monuments Men played on more than 3,000 screens this weekend, while The LEGO Movie was showing on 3,775 screens, and that includes 3D viewings. But that doesn’t change the fact that The LEGO Movie is awesome and should be seen by everyone. Twice.
Despite its poor domestic earning through four weeks, I, Frankenstein had a strong enough foreign performance and is close to at least earning back its production budget. If life was actually fair, this movie would be fined by the MPAA and Academy and never make any money. The people who made it need to be taught a serious lesson about thinking that a hunky Frankenstein fighting monsters is a terrible f*cking idea so it never happens again.
(Chart via Box Office Mojo)