The Lego Movie finally was the film that knocked Ride Along off its No 1 box office perch
for the last three weekends in arrow.
The independently
financed animated film released by Warner
Bros, which is really aimed more towards adults than kids and has been rightfully
so getting rave reviews, calling it much more funnier and savvier than the usual simplistic kids movie, made $69
million this weekend.
Predictions
are that the film will easily coast to at least a $200 million domestic box office take and will pretty much dominate the
rest of the month of February into March.
And it’s possible that The Lego Movie could have done even more than $69 million if most of the country wasn’t still digging
out and recovering from the brutal weather early last week. Already
meteorologists are saying that this winter has been the coldest that the Midwest alone has
seen in 30 years and it isn’t over yet.
But no worries for Ride Along which landed in third place and has grossed well past the $100 million mark. Funny how there had been predictions that The Best Man Holiday, which stalled at $70 million and A Madea Christmas which hasn’t gotten past $52 million, were a sure thing to make $100 million and fell way short, but no one was predicting Ride
Along to do it. It wasn’t even on anyone’s radar. But then again, that’s the
nature of the film biz.
Meanwhile, the
other big release, George Clooney’s The
Monuments Men, a throwback to big action 60’s World War II action movies
such as the Guns of Navarone, The Train
and Where Eagles Dare, pulled in a very respectable. $22 million, which is about what the film was excepted to do.
However, tepid
reviews calling the film dull and meandering didn’t help. The film was originally
scheduled to be released during the 2013 Xmas season, but Sony pushed its release date back, claiming the at the special effects
weren’t ready. Though, most likely, the real story is that, once they saw the film, the studio realized that it was no Oscar contender, and pushed it back until now.
The Weinstein Company’s Vampire Academy flat-out flopped and will be gone from most
theaters by the end of the week. And if you’re keeping count, 12 Years A Slave is now at $47.3 million and has made $100
million worldwide to date.