‘The Lego Movie’ to tower over ‘Monuments Men’

Remember when people thought The Lego Movie was a bad idea? All the sniping and Internet eye-rolling that accompanied Warner Bros.’ decision to release a film based on the popular kids toy brand has been all but forgotten today, as positive reviews for the animated flick continue to pour in. Opening wide in 3,775 locations, The Lego Movie is poised to enjoy a boffo opening.  According to Fandango, Lego is on track to rake in the highest pre-sales figures since Toy Story 3, a feat that would place it ahead of blockbusters Despicable Me 2, Monsters University, and box-office darling Frozen.  Each of the aforementioned films debuted to $67 million or more, which certainly bodes well for Emmet, Wyldstyle, and the rest of Lego’s funny, earnest and “special” cast.

The Monuments Men’s box-office performance, on the other hand, is more uncertain. Writer-director-producer George Clooney’s WWII dramedy could also be called funny and earnest, but critics are seeing something much less special in the combination. An old-fashioned war movie, which our critic Kevin Lally called “A film set in the 1940s that feels like it was made in the 1960s,” and to which NY Mag critic David Edelstein suggested the alternate title The Tasteful Dozen, The Monuments Men has received underwhelming reviews.  The draw of such a stellar, A-list cast (Clooney, Matt Damon, Cate Blanchett, Bill Murray, John Goodman) will still likely help Men land at No. 2 this weekend, but expectations are tempered. Some pundits predict returns around $25 million. Others, like Sony, have less faith in the pedigreed caper: The film’s distributor believes receipts will tally out in the high teens.

The third and final new film opening today, Vampire Academy, is expected to fall behind Ride Along and possibly even Frozen to clock in at No. 4 or 5.  There hasn’t been much of a marketing push behind this new(ish) spin on the tired blood-sucker trope, although it does have Mean Girls and Freaky Friday director Mark Waters to recommend it. The teen romp will probably be funny enough – which, in all likelihood, will still not be enough to make an impact at the box office. Expect Academy to earn $6 or $7 million.

‘Ride Along’ eases ahead of ‘Awkward’

As expected, the domestic box office turned in a series of soft numbers over this past, Super Bowl weekend. The top 12 films earned a combined $72.4 million – which, however, is still a small improvement over this same weekend last year. Clocking in at No. 1 yet again, Ride Along experienced a slight downturn of 42% to earn $12.3 million. The cop comedy has now raked in a little under $93 million in total, and has officially pulled up ahead of Kevin Hart’s last hit film, Think Like a Man, which grossed $91.5 million in 2012. This is the third weekend in a row Ride Along finished the weekend ahead of its competitors. Such a distinction has earned it a place among lucrative company: Gravity and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug also reigned as kings of the box office for three or more consecutive weekends.

Speaking of royalty, the princess protagonists of Disney’s Frozen have yet to lose their appeal. The Mouse House released a sing-along version of its tenacious hit film, and the gambit paid off. Frozen climbed right back up the box-office charts to land at No. 2 this weekend, adding another $9.3 million to its staggering cume of $360+ million. It’s on track to out-gross Despicable Me 2 ($368.1 million) by mid-month.

That Awkward Moment will likely be on its way out by the time Frozen reaches the aforementioned benchmark. Moment marks the worst opening yet for a Zac Efron vehicle: The film debuted to $9 million. With an underwhelming Cinemascore rating of a “B” and less than laudatory reviews from the critics, That Awkward Moment will probably flame out to $20 million or so by the time it finishes up its theatrical run.

At No. 4, The Nut Job earned $7.6 million and crossed the $50 million mark on Sunday (we should have opted for a lively kids’ film over yesterday’s ho-hum football game, too). Lone Survivor just missed besting the animated caper, grossing $7.2 million and enjoying a box-office milestone of its own: The film has now earned $100 million. In fact, Survivor is the last 2013 release to do so, making it the 35^th movie in the past year to earn $100 million or more – a new box-office record.  The last year to have seen so many $100 million successes was 2009, when 32 movies earned the distinction.

Unfortunately, Labor Day’s distinction is not nearly so positive. The Jason Reitman romance had the worst opening of the weekend. Day bombed with $5.4 million. Technically speaking, the film’s debut is better than previous Reitman efforts Young Adult ($3.4 million) and Thank You for Smoking ($4.5 million), however, those films both had much smaller releases, opening in roughly half the number of theaters than Labor Day. Reitman’s contemporary David O. Russell, on the other hand, is in the midst of a career upswing. American Hustle is now the director’s most successful movie, beating Silver Linings Playbook with its current standing of $133.6 million.

Finally, Gravity added $2 million to its domestic cume of $264 million. Over half its earnings stemmed from IMAX screenings.

‘Despicable Me 2’ continues to dominate box office

 

As has
become the norm in Hollywood, the sequels prevailed this weekend. The biggest
grosser was Despicable Me 2, earning
the top spot for the second week in a row. Coming in at number two was Grown Ups 2, the Adam Sandler and Co.
comedy. Pacific Rim, which had been
gaining buzz due to its original monsters vs. robots concept, was left in third
place, underperforming at the box office.

Despicable Me 2 likely earned its second weekend at
number one due to great reviews and its family-friendly content (minions!),
which both children and their parents can enjoy. The film took in about $45 million
this weekend, a 46 percent drop from its opening. This is a similar decline to
the other animated feature still in major release, Monsters University, which
fell 45 percent its second week in theatres. This data puts Despicable Me 2 on track to earn a total
of around $350 million this summer, and to probably become the second-highest
earning movie of the year. The film has so far grossed about $230 million
domestically, or 91 percent of what the original, Despicable Me, earned throughout its entire run. All this success
undoubtedly means that Universal will be rolling out a Despicable Me 3 in a few years’ time.

Despite Grown Ups 2’s extremely negative
reviews—the film only scored a 7 percent critics’ rating on Rotten Tomatoes—the
film has exceeded expectations at the box office, coming in just $2.25 million
behind Despicable Me 2. The $42.5
million three-day haul is actually better than Grown Ups’ 2010 opening weekend. These earnings can probably be
chalked up to the fact that, despite the film’s crude humor and PG-13 rating,
the opening weekend audiences were more than 50 percent female and more than 50
percent under 25, indicating that many families went to see the film together. Grown Ups 2’s successful debut (the
second highest of any of Adam Sandler’s live-action productions), indicates
that the comedian’s post-Jack and Jill
slump is officially over. Grown Ups 2
has now overtaken The Hangover Part III
to have the largest opening weekend for a comedy this year.

Unfortunately,
that leaves Pacific Rim to place
third this weekend. Despite pretty positive reviews from both critics and audience
members, the film just didn’t have enough appeal to win over a wide demographic
of viewers. With no bankable stars and a heavy reliance on CGI-created action
scenes, the film predictably drew crowds from the fanboy sector, but couldn’t
muster up nearly as many older or female audience members. The $38.3 million
opening is by no means a flop, but it is under what Warner Bros. had hoped for,
especially considering that another recent original sci-fi film, World War Z, scored $66 million its
first weekend in theaters. Of course, World
War Z had the benefit of Brad Pitt and was based on a book with built-in
hype. It is now likely that Pacific Rim
will earn a total of about $110 million domestically, and will rely heavily on
the international market to break even on its reportedly $190 million
production budget.

The female
buddy-comedy The Heat, starring
Sandra Bullock and Melissa McCarthy, took in $14 million in its third weekend
out, putting its total gross thus far at over $112 million and keeping it on
track to become the highest-grossing comedy of the summer. Disney’s flop The Lone Ranger continues to struggle along
at fifth place in its second week in theatres. The film has only made $71
million so far, or a third of its $215 million budget. It seems as though Jack
Sparrow just doesn’t translate to the Old West. 

'Despicable Me 2' takes down the 'Lone Ranger'

For the studio behind the yellow, goggle-wearing peanuts known as Minions, the five-day holiday weekend was great. Despicable Me 2 earned an astonishing $142 million over the five-day period, with its traditional three-day weekend bringing in $82.5 million of that total. People liked the original, and Universal marketed the follow-up as more of the same--but with even more of those adorable, babbling Minions. The budget for the animated feature was also just $76 million--assuredly much less than that of Disney behemoth Monsters University. Given this performance, there will definitely be a Despicable Me 3 in the works. Its $142 million opening narrowly tops the five-day opening record held by Toy Story 3, and this feature shows all signs of being the top animated feature of the summer, if not 2013.

The Lone Ranger had a five-day debut of $48.9 million, and a regular weekend total of $29.4 million. But for a film that likely costs over $200 million, and doesn't have global appeal, that's horrible news. THR is already speculating that Disney will take a writedown that could top $150 million for the Jerry Bruckheimer-produced feature, which was supposed to replicate the success of Pirates of the Caribbean by having Johnny Depp in a similar over-the-top role caked in makeup. Luckily, Disney has the successes of Iron Man 3 and Monsters University to bolster its bottom line, but this is a costly misfire that's only slightly better than last year's failure of John Carter.

Debuting in eighth place, Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain earned $17.4 million since its Wednesday opening, $10.1 million of which came from the regular three-day weekend. That's an excellent performance for the stand-up comedy performance, which had a budget of just $2.5 million. That's also an improvement on the $7 million total for Hart's 2011 stand-up film, Kevin Hart: Laugh at My Pain. The comedian's strongest following is in markets like Atlanta and Baltimore, and the film's distribution plan has saturated those markets. Hart is definitely a star on the rise, and I suspect it won't be long before he toplines a comedy feature.

The Way, Way Back opened on Friday, and earned an encouraging $575,000, which amounts to a $30,000 per-screen average, the highest of any film this week. The comedic indie, which includes performances from Steve Carell and Allison Janney, takes place at a summer beach house and is a ripe offering for the dog days of summer.

This Friday, Adam Sandler and co. return for Grown Ups 2, and manmade monsters go up against alien ones in Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim.

'Despicable Me 2' and 'Lone Ranger' ready for fireworks

The first Despicable Me was a smashing success, and families and adults alike will be turning out this weekend to get their Minion fix in Despicable Me 2 (3,956 theatres). This summer is loaded with animated movies, but the strong reviews coming in for the feature so far means Despicable Me 2 stands a chance at being the cream of the crop, both critically and at the box office.

Blue Sky's May release, Epic, recently crossed the $100 million mark, and it's likely the weakest of the bunch. For the past two weeks, Pixar's Monsters University has held the number-one spot, even with last week's competition from The Heat and White House Down. The sequel has already earned $178 million. Still to come this summer is DreamWorks Animation's Turbo, Sony's The Smurfs 2, and Disney's Planes. Every studio doing animated movies has an offering this summer, leading to an incredibly crowded field. That's because when animated movies are done right, they're hugely successful both at the box office and, of course, through merchandising. According to FJI critic Kevin Lally, the Minion-filled tale deserves its expected $120 million gross from Wednesday through Sunday. The "boisterous, wholly
satisfying follow-up that takes the original premise in new
directions and provides memorable moments for its entire cast of
amusing characters," he extols.

What better way to celebrate America's independence than with a modern update to a western? Johnny Depp plays Tonto in The Lone Ranger (3,700 theatres), which our critic Frank Lovece dubs "an Old West superhero movie" that's far more entertaining than Man of Steel." However, while Man of Steel opened to $128 million over four days, Lone Ranger may end up with a more modest $70 million take over the five-day period. If audiences agree with Lovece that the movie is a "buoyantly kinetic,
full-of-heart adventure" that recalls Depp's memorable performance as Captain Jack Sparrow in Pirates of the Caribbean, Lone Ranger may end up higher, and play well in weeks to come.

Rounding out the offerings is a theatrical release of comedian Kevin Hart's 2012 standup performance at Madison Square Garden in Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (876 theatres). Our critic Marsha McCreadie calls Hart an "incredibly agile and
physically gifted comic," noting the Hart fans at her screening were enthusiastic.

On Friday, The Way, Way Back (19 theatres) will join the list of releases. The coming-of-age comedy about a teen boy finding his way by taking a summer job at a water park features a great cast of adult stars including Steve Carell, Sam Rockwell, and Allison Janney. Nat Faxon and Jim Rash, who co-wrote The Descendants, penned the screenplay and make their directing debut with the project, a similar family drama spiced with a pinch of dark humor.

On Monday, we'll be back to report on the box-office fireworks of the long holiday weekend.