Over There

By Edwin Davies

October 6, 2014

We want to go to this guy's parties.

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While the U.S. box office this week was dominated by girls both gone and doll-shaped, and both of those films made a sizable impact on the international scene as well, the biggest film outside of America was a Chinese film called Breakup Buddies. Sadly not the most heartbreaking installment of the Air Bud series to date, Breakup Buddies tells the story of a couple of guys who go an ill-advised bender after they both find themselves suddenly single. A modest premise, to be sure, but it's one that raked in $38 million this weekend and has amassed $93 million from foreign audiences so far.

That means that David Fincher's Gone Girl, the film that launched a thousand think pieces, lands in second with $24.6 million. Fincher has proven to be a very sizable draw over the last few years, and only one of his 10 features has failed to earn at least $100 million worldwide (cruelly, that outlier was his best film, Zodiac). Considering what a phenomenon the book is, and when you factor in Ben Affleck's renewed status as a draw, we should expect Gone Girl to at least match the international totals of The Social Network ($128 million) and The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo ($130.1 million), though it remains to be seen if it can reach the heights of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ($206.4 million) or Se7en ($227.2 million).

Bang Bang, a Bollywood remake of the rarely discussed, perplexingly titled Tom Cruise-Cameron Diaz action-comedy Knight and Day, sits in third place with $24.185 million. It also debuted in the U.S. and took in $1.215 million, making for the biggest domestic debut of a Bollywood film this year.

Dracula Untold, meanwhile, got the jump on its U.S. debut by opening in several territories a week early. It was rewarded with an international haul of $21 million, which at least means that it will earn some money from somewhere, even though its prospects in America look a little dubious, considering that these kind of epic reinventions of established horror icons have not been doing particularly well of late (see: Frankenstein, I).

In fifth this week is Annabelle, the spin-off of horror mega-hit The Conjuring that answers all the questions no one was asking about where that creepy doll came from. It's surely a matter of time before a Gone Girl prequel focused solely on how that robot dog was made gets greenlit. Annabelle scared international audiences out of $20 million this weekend, which could mark the beginning of a very profitable run; The Conjuring earned $180.6 million overseas last year. I doubt that Annabelle will achieve quite that level of success, but considering that it was made quickly and for a fraction of the price of its predecessor, it doesn't need to.




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Speaking of frugal investments paying off, The Maze Runner continues to do very good business overseas. The cheaply made YA adaptation earned $16.5 million, which brings its total to date to a very strong $119.1 million. Since the film cost only $34 millionand has already earned double that domestically, this is something of a victory lap for a film that was guaranteed a sequel within hours of being released.

Another film that's already justified sequels (assuming its star wants to make them, that is; I doubt the young faces of The Maze Runner can afford to be that choosy) is The Equalizer. The Denzel Washington vehicle added $13 million and has a running total of $39.6 million from overseas audiences after a few weeks. It's hit most of its major markets at this point, so it is unlikely to break out to a greater degree than Washington's films tend to anyway, but like The Maze Runner, its success overseas is less important than its strong performance domestically.

Black & White: The Dawn of Justice, a Taiwanese cop movie that has nothing to do with Superman or Batman, at least as far as I can tell, is eighth this week, having earned $10 million. It's sitting on $19 million to date, a total that is good, but suggests that money was left on the table by not titling it Black & White: The Age of Ultron.

Dearest, the Chinese abduction drama that was one of the breakouts last week, continues to perform well in ninth place as it took $6.5 million. It has so far earned $33 million, so expect the next Transformers movie to feature a subplot in which Bumblebee gets kidnapped in an attempt to draw pander to that audience just a little bit more.

The Boxtrolls closes out the top ten this week, having earned $6 million. With $26 million so far, that puts the Laika stop-motion feature on track to finish somewhere in the $49-$64 million range that their previous films - Coraline, ParaNorman and Corpse Bride - also earned, and further establishes them as a studio with a small but devoted (and slowly growing) following.


     


 
 

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