Over There: International Box Office

By Edwin Davies

November 24, 2014

Artist's depiction of North Korea

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Katniss Everdeen returned to theaters this weekend, and while her ever-so-slightly-less-than-amazing debut in the US has made The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1's success a little ambiguous, there's no question about the international performance. The third film in what would in a reasonable world be a trilogy but isn't took in a huge $152 million from overseas audiences.

The second Hunger Games saw a massive jump from the first one, which was one of the rare blockbusters to make more in the U.S than elsewhere. Katniss' first time in the arena earned $283.2 million in 2012, while her return brought in $440.2 million. A similar jump this time out isn't out of the question, though the same reluctance to pay for half a movie that is hurting it in the US could stop it exploding the way that it might have had the film been a true finale. A finish of at least $500 million seems pretty achievable, though.

The Hunger Games' debut didn't hurt Interstellar any, as the science fiction epic from Christopher Nolan earned an additional $70 million, which brings its running total to $329 million after three weeks. That puts it on track to easily match and probably overtake the $442.3 million that Gravity earned in 2013, and it should probably get pretty close to the $532.9 million Inception earned in 2010.

The gap between the top two films and the rest of the chart is gargantuan, as third place finisher Fury earned $12.4 million. The Brad Pitt war movie has earned $74.4 million, just short of the $76.9 that The Monuments Men earned earlier this year, and proof positive of Pitt's enduring appeal overseas.

In fourth place this week is the Chinese kung-fu movie Rise of the Legend, which earned $11.9 million, most of which came from its debut in its home country. That's a very solid debut, and it pretty much guarantees that I will spend years mixing it up with Rise of the Guardians and Legend of the Guardians.

Speaking of China, Penguins of Madagascar earned an additional $8.7 million there, which gives it $23.3 million after two weeks. That's pretty good considering that the third Madagascar film earned $31.5 in China back in 2012, and is a continued sign that the spin-off will do pretty well.

Big Hero 6 is in sixth place with $7 million as its slow rollout continues apace. The Disney film has already earned $49.5 million from only a handful of territories, so we can expect this one to chug along nicely for weeks to come.




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Dumb and Dumber To earned $6.5 million, giving the long-awaited(?) sequel a running total of $18.5 million. It hasn't opened in all that many territories yet, but even so the Farrelly Brothers' film doesn't seem to be connecting with international audiences the way that it did (for an admittedly limited amount of time) in the US.

Eighth place belongs to The Imitation Game, which had another strong week in the UK and a handful of other territories and earned $3.3 million. The potential awards contender has so far earned a very strong $10.5 million, and potentially sets up an epic showdown between Cumberbatch, who played Steven Hawking in a very good TV movie back in 2004, and Eddie Redmayne, who's trespassing on Bennie C's territory with his turn in The Theory of Everything.

The chart is rounded out this week by Don't Go Breaking My Heart 2 and Dracula Untold, which earned $2.3 million and $2.1 million, respectively. The Chinese romance has $25 million to date, while the Luke Evans vehicle has $156.7 million and is very slowly grinding to a halt. Even though it has more than covered its $70 million production budget, that has to be something of a disappointment once you factor in the heavy marketing costs and the shared universe-building expectations heaped upon the film.


     


 
 

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