Though it may be about toys, “The Lego Movie” isn’t playing around this weekend and looks to make slightly north of $60 million in three days.
In line with the film’s reported $60 million budget, and outdoing its pre-weekend bet by $15 million, the bow is a great start for the new, demo-spanning franchise (a sequel is already in the works). The 3D toon earned $17.1 million domestically Friday.
Sony’s “The Monuments Men” is off to a fine start with $7 million Friday and a $20 million projected bow that is at the dead center of pre-weekend predictions. While hitting the mark is good news itself, observers predicted it could overperform up to $24 million, a possibility made less likely by the buzz coming off its very mixed reviews.
The Weinsten Co. bowed “Vampire Academy” Friday to $1.4 million, with a dismal maybe $4 million on the horizon for the weekend for probably seventh place overall at the domestic marketplace.
Familiar holdovers are taking shape behind “Monuments Men” to round out the top five. Universal’s “Ride Along” looks to third in its fourth weekend with between $8 million and $9 million by Sunday. Meanwhile Disney’s “Frozen” should add $6 million to its total this weekend, and soph “That Awkward Moment” from Focus should take $5 million.
“Lego Movie,” which is co-financed and co-produced with Village Roadshow, is the first product of WB’s newly founded animation consortium — the studio’s stab at emulating Pixar’s infamous brain trust — which includes Phil Lord and Chris Miller (“Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs) and Jared Stern (“Mr. Popper’s Penguins”) among several others. Lord and Miller wrote and directed “The Lego Movie,” and Stern along with Michelle Morgan (“Girl Most Likely”) are scripting the sequel.
