“LEGO Movie” Tops Box Office Again; “Wind Rises” Doesn’t Excite Americans

The LEGO Movie crushed its live-action competition at the box office and remained in 1st place for the third weekend in a row with $31.5 million (estimated). The two new wide releases that took second and third place—3 Days to Kill and Pompeii—mustered a mere $22M between the two of them.

Hayao Miyazaki’s The Wind Rises opened in 21 U.S. theaters with $306,000. Its per-theater average of $14,571 was weaker than Spirited Away’s opening, which earned an average of $17,301 from 26 theaters, and slightly better than Howl’s Moving Castle which had a per-theater average of $11,888 from 36 theaters. The film’s soft opening in super-limited release doesn’t bode well for its expansion to over 400 theaters next weekend.

Disney’s Frozen maintained its eighth-place position, despite a 30% drop in gross. The film’s weekend take of $4.4M (est) boosted its overall domestic total to an astonishing $384.1M. The film is now all but assured of reaching the $400M domestic mark, a height attaind only by two other animated films upon their original release—Shrek 2 and Toy Story 3.

International figures will be added soon…