Having already earned $65.8 million abroad, for a promising $98.3-million early take, Peabody should keep the DreamWorks fans occupied until the studio’s more likely crowd-pleaser, How to Train Your Dragon 2, opens June 13.
(WATCH: Kristen Bell and Idina Menzel bring Frozen to life)īudgeted at about $125 million, the tale of a genius beagle and his pet boy, careering through ancient history on Peabody’s WABAC machine, played to a predominantly female audience (56%), with 52% over the age of 25 - surprisingly high for an animated feature with a family vibe.
The Disney princess movie has remained in the domestic top 10 for 15 consecutive weeks - topping Avatar’s 14 but well behind Titanic’s 26 - and is now at $1.009 billion worldwide. 2013, has made $130 million of its $393.1 million this calendar year. This year The LEGO Movie was at the top of the charts three of the last four weeks, earning $225 million and Frozen, released in late Nov. But that DreamWorks entry benefited from a hunger for animated features the last to hit No.
Peabody & Sherman, based on the “Peabody’s Improbable History” segment created in 1959 by Ted Key for the TV cartoon series Rocky and His Friends, opened well below the $43.6 million for The Croods a year ago. (READ: Reviews of the original 300 by Lev Grossman and Richard Corliss) Director Noam Murro can’t yet proclaim Victory, but his movie has a fighting chance to be a midlevel worldwide hit. Empire also sizzled abroad, cadging a fast $87.8 million from 58 foreign markets. The new movie received a middling “B” CinemaScore from first-nighters, who skewed 62% male (the audience for the first 300 was even more lopsided, at 72% male) and nearly a third of attendees in the old, golden age group of 25 to 35. Empire registered the strongest opening for an R-rated film since the early summer of 2012, when Seth MacFarlane’s Ted grossed $54.4 million. So it’s a significant achievement that a male-oriented sex-and-violence epic with no stars can grab $45 million. Also, today’s action fare tends to be of the tamer, PG-13- rated variety and Empire is a “hard R,” with bloodbaths galore and luscious Eva Green as a smoldering dominatrix of the Aegean. If that demographic hasn’t quite deserted the multiplexes for video games and social media, it is a much less reliable factor. (READ: Our review of 300: Rise of an Empire)īack in 2007, the core audience for blockbusters was young males, whose tastes were a defining factor in the kinds of movies Hollywood made. Rise of an Empire, which Snyder produced and co-wrote but did not direct, cost more to make ($110 million to $65 million) and earned less, despite the ticket-price advantages of 3-D and IMAX, which accounted for about three-quarters of its weekend take. Exploding on screens exactly seven years ago, Zack Snyder’s R-rated 300 earned a beefcakey $70.9 million on its way to more than $200 million domestic and a $456-million global gross. Neither movie’s opening matched those of certain esteemed predecessors, but the studios could provide explanations and/or excuses.