Over There

International Box Office for the week of August 17

By Edwin Davies

August 18, 2014

He's going to sneeze and thereby incinerate that map.

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The weird thing about the international box office is that staggered release dates allow films that looked like they were on the way out to come back with a vengeance. One such situation arose this week, as How to Train Your Dragon 2 zoomed up from eighth place last week to take the number one spot. It earned $37.7 million, much of which came from a huge $25.9 million debut in China, and which brought its international total to $366 million. $400 million now seems to be a certainty for a franchise that badly needed to do great business overseas to make up for its decline in America.

Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy continues to chug along comfortably in second this weekend. It debuted in only a few new territories but it still earned $33.1 million (a slim decline from last week's $40.1 million take) and has now earned $196.4 million through three weeks. It still has plenty of big markets left - most notably China - so $300 million overseas is very much a possibility. That'd be a big milestone for the film, since it would be the first non-sequel Marvel film to reach that number overseas (the original Thor came closest with $268.3 million in 2011).

The middle of the chart is pretty crowded this weekend as three films finished in very close proximity to each other. Reigning US box office champ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles continued its slow start with $25.6 million, giving it a total so far of $67.5 million. This one still has a lot of expanding to do, so don't mistake these comparatively modest numbers for weakness; the Turtles are going to be just as inexplicably huge outside America as they are in it. Lucy is hot on its heels, though, as the $40 million Luc Besson film took $22 million, bringing its total to date up to $61 million. With plenty of territories left and the combined international appeal of Besson and Scarlett Johansson, Lucy will continue to be one of the most successful projects for either party. South Korean hit The Admiral: Roaring Tides continues to impress with a weekend take of $22 million and a running total of $110 million.




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Dawn of the Planet of the Apes just pips The Expendables 3 for sixth place this weekend (though that might change if more data comes in). Those damn dirty apes added a further $16.5 million and could easily afford dozens of Statues of Liberty with the $337 million they've earned so far. Stallone and his crew of geriatric mercenaries managed to muster $15 million from 22 territories, which isn't a great start but isn't terrible, either. Considering how badly the film is doing at home, it'll need to land in the same $170-$220 million range that the first two managed, which is possible, but we don't yet have a clear sense whether international audiences are as bored of this franchise as America is.

Rounding out the top ten this week are Pirates, which added $13.5 million to its growing total of $32.5 million; Transformers: Age of Extinction's global domination slowly grinds to a halt, but not before adding $8.4 million to its coffers, which now stands at $811.1 million; and The Inbetweeners Movie 2 continued to be the biggest comedy franchise that only British people care about, as it added $7 million from a handful of territories and has an international total so far of $42.5 million.

Finally, I thought it was worth mentioning a film that hasn't appeared much in this column since it debuted before the column started and so hasn't featured that much: Disney's Maleficent. I wanted to mention it because, as I write this, it has an overseas gross of $507 million, which means that it has now grossed more domestically and internationally than The Amazing Spider-Man 2, and will soon overtake X-Men: Days of Future Past's $511.6 million to become the second most successful film of the year globally, behind only Transformers: Age of Extinction. I think that's worth mentioning because it's completely mind-boggling to me, and is probably the one box office result that no one could have predicted at the start of the summer, when it was assumed that the Angelina Jolie vehicle would be a modest performer, destined to be overshadowed by all the big franchise films that it has left in its wake. It might end up losing its number two spot to Guardians of the Galaxy before too long, but its current success is nothing short of astonishing, and I just wanted to acknowledge that before the film completes what has been an expectation-shattering run.


     


 
 

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