Over There

International Box Office Discussion for August 22-24, 2014

By Edwin Davies

August 25, 2014

The Four IV is a foregone conclusion, right?

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With no new Hollywood blockbusters debuting worldwide this week, and only one new surprisingly buoyant foreign hit to speak of, international box office consists largely of shuffling around a few old favorites. The top card - to torture that metaphor just a little more - this weekend was Lucy, which added a few new territories and earned $34 million.

Much has been made of the film's breakout success in the US - it's close to becoming Luc Besson's most popular domestic hit when you factor in inflation - but its overseas success has also been pretty remarkable, even for a director who has demonstrated a consistently strong international brand for more than a decade now.

The Fifth Element, which is currently Besson's biggest global hit as a director, earned $200 million overseas back in 1997, a time when that achievement was considerably less common than it is today. It looks like Lucy has a better than fair shot of matching that total before long. At its current pace, it could even overtake Taken 2 to become the biggest hit Besson's even been involved with.

Guardians of the Galaxy didn't expand any this week, so it fell a little bit to $20.7 million. As I've said before, this one still has some huge markets in its future, so expect it to do much better in weeks ahead. Meanwhile, How to Train Your Dragon 2, which shot to number one last week, falls to three with a weekend take of $18.2 million. Much of that came from China, which is now the film's biggest market outside of the US. Its overseas tally is $402.4 million to date.

When The Expendables 3 crashed and burned last week, there was a lot of talk about how the film's saving grace would be its international numbers, since the series has been fairly robust in that department in the past. So far, that support has yet to materialize, as it earned $16.5 million this weekend and has a fairly uninspiring two-week total of $37.7 million. It's still doing better business than it is in the US, but we're talking about a very low bar here. It has room to expand, but the series is starting to look almost as tired as its cast.




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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles took $15.5 million this weekend, which brings its international total to date to $93.2 million. That might seem pretty modest compared to its success domestically, but it's worth bearing in mind that it won't hit most major markets until September and October, so nearly $100 million at this point in its release cycle bodes very well for the film's future, if not for the culture of humanity as a whole.

Our sole new entry into the top 10 this week is the confusingly titled The Four 3, which earned $15.1 million and landed at #5 just to mess with us all that little bit more. It's a 3D Chinese wuxia film, and should not be confused with the upcoming third Thor film, at least not until I rent a theater and show them both at the same time, which will result in many delightful misunderstandings and the consternation of Marvel fanboys and Chinese cinema enthusiasts alike.

The bottom half of the top 10 consists of former hits and also-rans. Into The Storm continues to stir up mild interest from overseas audiences, taking $8.8 million, which gives it a not completely terrible running total of $30.3 million. Dawn of the Planet of the Apes continues to run up the numbers on its stunning run, adding $8.5 million and sitting pretty on a grand total of $353 million. The Pirates continue searching for that missing seal, and apparently that quest was compelling enough for $8.2 million. It's at $40.2 million now, which is pretty great, even if it isn't Roaring Currents great. Finally, Hercules, the Brett Ratner/The Rock team-up that you've probably already stopped thinking about, has turned into a modest hit overseas. It earned $8.2 million this week and has a total to date of $90.7 million. Even when added to the domestic take of $69.9 million, that's not enough to make up for the film's hefty $100 million budget and equally hefty marketing costs, but it's probably taken a lot of the sting away from its domestic mediocrity.

Speaking of mediocrity: Frank Miller's Sin City: A Dame to Kill For Port of Call New Orleans debuted in three territories outside of the US and earned $4.9 million. That's potentially encouraging news since it suggests that there might be more of an audience for the film internationally than there is domestically (though we'll have to wait a few weeks to see how it does once it has hit more markets), but that audience would have to be pretty fervent for the film to have any chance of recouping its budget. Now we wait to see if it ever gets mentioned in this column again.


     


 
 

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