Over There: International Box Office

By Edwin Davies

January 26, 2015

I think you gave your stylist a bit too much leeway.

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The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies returned to the top of the charts this week after ceding the lead to Liam Neeson over the previous couple of weeks. Bilbo and pals earned $54.25 million, much of which came from a huge debut in China, where the film earned almost as much in one weekend as the first Hobbit film managed in its entire run ($49.5 million for Five Armies versus $49.7 million for Unexpected Journey). That pushed its international total to $616.9 million, and pretty much guarantees that the series' swan song will finish with an international total north of $700 million and a global take close to a billion.

Taken 3 may be flagging badly in America but it is still doing robust business overseas. The trilogy-closer earned $26.3 million, which gives it a running total of $151.4 million. This number compares very favorably to Taken 2's international gross of $236.2 million, the sort of numbers that might make Luc Besson and Neeson reconsider ending the series (or at least make them think about starting an entirely original franchise called Took, starring Neeson as Myron Bills).

American Sniper continues to play very well internationally despite that pesky "American" in its title and everything. The phenomenon earned $17.6 million this weekend from a fairly small number of territories and is sitting pretty with $47.5 million. That gives it a global total of $247.6 million, or about twice what I would have expected it to earn in its entire run, and it will overtake Gran Torino ($270 million) as director Clint Eastwood's biggest global hit sometime this week.

Big Hero 6 is also chugging along nicely in fourth place this weekend. The Disney superhero movie earned $14.9 million, which puts its international total to date at $238.6 million. That's very close to the total of the film in fifth place, as The Penguins of Madagascar earned $9 million and has a total of $240 million. We should expect Baymax to waddle adorably past the penguins at some point this week and then never look back.




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Night at the Museum: The Secret of the Tomb took in $8.7 million this weekend, good for sixth place and a running total of $192.5 million. It still trails its two predecessors by quite a distance - the first film earned $323.6 million overseas while the second earned $235.9 million - but this performance makes the final film less of a disaster than it could have been.

Seventh belongs to Oscar contender The Theory of Everything. The drama about the life of Stephen Hawking and his marriage to an immortal (seriously, Hollywood, it's okay to make your actresses look a little bit older when you're trying to cover more than two decades of someone's life) earned $7 million this weekend, which gives it a running total of $41.7 million. Of the films nominated for the Academy Awards, this strikes me as one that could benefit most from a big win since it's doing okay, but seems primed to explode if it takes home Actor (unlikely, but only slightly) or Picture (almost impossible).

Seventh Son - a film that I'm going to go out on a limb and say probably doesn't have any Oscars in its future - is just behind with $6.8 million. The film that Jeff Bridges has probably forgotten he made has so far taken a frankly crazy $77 million since opening a few weeks ago, and will probably be close to the $100 million mark before its stateside bow on the 6th of February.

Ninth this week is the South Korean movie Gangnam Blues, a noir film about corrupt real estate development which most everyone outside of South Korea will associate with Psy because we've never seen the word "Gangnam" used in any other context.

Finally this week, we have Mortdecai. The film may have flopped in the US, but things are looking up internationally since it earned a full one million dollars more outside of the US than in it. (Look, this film is a disaster, so they should take any win they can get.) I'm being glib, but Johnny Depp is still a pretty significant draw internationally (though the appeal of his co-star, Mortdecai's Mustache, is largely untested), so I would not be surprised if the film does markedly better overseas. Maybe not enough to recoup its $60 million budget and likely considerable marketing expense, but hopefully enough to cover the film's extravagant mustache wax budget.

Again, they need to take any victory they can get on this one.


     


 
 

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