To the surprise of no one, the nearly universally loved LEGO Movie repeated at the box office this weekend, dropping just 36.9% from last week and adding $31.4 million to its gross, which would’ve been good for a first weekend, let alone a third. Strangely, 72% of its $234 million worldwide has come from domestic box office, the kind of figure that’s usually reversed for big budget and kids movies. Maybe furreigners hate Legos? Regardless, WB has already greenlit a sequel, set for 2017.
Elsewhere, Paul WS. Anderson’s men-in-skirts-vs-volcano movie Pompeii, opened with just $10 million, in third place. You earn nothing, Jon Snow. If it didn’t seem like there was much of an advertising push, that could be because, while the movie cost $100 million to produce, the distributor, Sony, didn’t actually spend any of that.
Sony didn’t spend a dime producing this one, allowing Constantin Films to produce the $80-$100 million “Titanic Meets Gladiator Meets Dante’s Peak” hybrid and merely received a distribution fee. Film District handled the marketing. All of this is a long way of saying that Sony doesn’t care too much that the film made $10 million this weekend. [Forbes]
That said, the jury’s still out until the foreign totals come through, considering Paul WS Anderson’s last three movies have made 82, 84, and 80 percent of their money in foreign markets, respectively. Foreigners love Shitty Paul Anderson as much as they hate LEGOs, apparently. Now it’s a bad-idea horse race between Pompeii ($10 million opening weekend), I, Frankenstein ($18.6m domestic), and The Legend of Hercules ($18.6m domestic). My money’s on Pompeii, as implausible as that may seem.
Oh right, I skipped number two. That honor went to Three Days To Kill, the Kevin Costner action comedy from Relativity Media directed by one-named wonder what happened to him five years from now, McG, with $12.3 million. I think the strategy here was to make a movie that looked like a Taken sequel if you just squint a little bit. It didn’t do terribly, but don’t expect to see more of growly Kevin Costner in a scarf any time soon either. Except in my sexual role play.
Here’s the run down. I had to zoom out one more click than usual to fit Vampire Academy in there.
[via BoxOfficeMojo]