‘Muppets’ Stumble in the US, ‘Rio 2’ Is #1 in Russia

No new animated movies debuted in the United States this weekend, although Disney’s family-oriented Muppets Most Wanted opened. The film opened in second place with a disappointing $16.5 million (estimated), far below the $29.2M opening of the franchise reboot The Muppets in 2011. That earlier film plummeted at the box office, too, after its opening, suggesting that the Muppets franchise isn’t as relevant to kids today as it was with earlier generations.

Here are the results of animated films at the domestic box office:
#3: Mr. Peabody & Sherman ($11.7M weekend/$81M total)
#9: The Lego Movie ($4.1M weekend/$243.4M total)
#13: Frozen ($734K weekend/$397.7M total)

Internationally, Rio 2 opened in a handful of foreign territories, earning $10.4M. The most significant portion came from Russia, where it was the number one film with $9.8M, a slight improvement on the original Rio’s $9.3M opening in Russia.

Frozen added an extra $9M overseas, mostly from Japan, and upped its global total to $1.049 billion. The film, which is currently ranked 12th on the all-time list of highest-grossing films, needs to reach $1.063 billion to overtake Toy Story 3 as the highest-grossing animated feature ever released.