By Lisa Richwine and
Andrea Burzynski
Animated prehistoric adventure The Croods, about a family of cave dwellers fighting for survival, claimed the top spot on movie box office charts with $44.7m from weekend ticket sales in the United States and Canada.
The 3-D children’s comedy from Shrek and Madagascar creator Dreamworks Animation added $63.3m from international markets, the studio said on Sunday, for a global total of $108 m.
Croods dethroned two-time box office champ Oz the Great and Powerful, which slipped to third place on domestic charts. The Walt Disney Co prequel to The Wizard of Oz earned $22m during its third weekend, according to studio estimates.
In between the two family films, thriller Olympus Has Fallen, about a White House under terrorist attack, took in $30.5m at North American (US and Canadian) theaters.
The performance of Croods provided a solid opening for Dreamworks, which needs a hit after the disappointment from November’s Rise of the Guardians.
Box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co Jeff Bock said the opening bodes well for Dreamworks, which he said is in the process of establishing new films ripe for sequels.
“It’s a great start for a spring film, especially one that’s animated,” he said.
Bock predicted that the film will gross between $175m and $200m over the next two months or so.
Croods tells the story of a Stone Age family that is uprooted after its cave is destroyed and forced to search for a new home. Nicolas Cage provides the voice of an overprotective father, while Emma Stone voices his rebellious daughter. The movie cost $135m to make, plus tens of millions more for marketing.
Ahead of the weekend, Wall Street analysts said Croods needed a domestic opening around $40m to ease investor concerns following the weak results from Guardians, which opened with $24m and grossed $303m total during its global run.
The poor performance of the holiday-themed Guardians forced Dreamworks to write down $87m and contributed to 350 layoffs taking place this year, the company said in February.
Dreamworks Animation Chief Operating Officer Ann Daly said she expects the film to do “phenomenally well” over the next few weeks, pointing to its A CinemaScore rating and the fact that many US children will be off from school and more likely to head to the movies.
“This time period is a big opportunity for us,” Daly said, citing How to Train Your Dragon as a past example of a family film that benefited from a release during a similar time frame.
In the coming weeks, Croods will have the family audience largely to itself as Oz plays out. Starring James Franco as a small-time magician who becomes the leader of the magical land, Oz brought its global total to $356.4m through Sunday.
Olympus Has Fallen beat pre-weekend forecasts for a $20m opening, and broke this year’s streak of underperforming R-rated action films. The movie stars Gerard Butler as a disgraced former Secret Service agent who works to save a kidnapped president, played by Aaron Eckhart.
Privately held FilmDistrict distributed Olympus, which was produced for $70m by Millennium Entertainment, according to Box Office Mojo. Elsewhere, raunchy adult comedy Spring Breakers, which racked up big sales a week ago in just three theaters, expanded into 1,100 theaters, nearly 3,000 fewer than Croods. The low-budget comedy took the sixth spot with $5m.
Spring Breakers stars Oz hero Franco and former Disney Channel starlets Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens as partiers who behave badly during a trip to Florida. Admission, a comedy starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd, grossed $6.4m and took fifth place. The $13m production tells the story of a Princeton admissions officer who meets a college-bound student who may be the son she gave up for adoption.
Halle Berry thriller The Call took fourth place with $8.7m in its second week in theaters. The film stars Berry as a 911 operater who tries to save a kidnapped teenager.
Reuters
