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LEGO Movie 2’s Not-So-Awesome Debut

You’d think that The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part would be a blockbuster. After all, LEGOs are all about blocks, right? But while The LEGO Movie 2 did cruise to a win this weekend, it’s leaning toward more of a bust.

The newest LEGO flick earned an estimated $34.4 million, which easily outdistanced its nearest competitors and is admittedly enough to buy even the most expensive of LEGO sets—even the Millennium Falcon. But while a win is a win, this victory might just be enough to inspire the Danish toymaker to create a King Pyrrhus minifigure: After all, LEGO 2’s take was about half of what the original LEGO Movie opened with back in 2014 ($69.1 million), and about $20 million below what Warner Bros. expected from the sequel in its opening frame. Even now, President Business may be looking for a bottle of glue to patch the franchise’s faulty financials together.

Still, this is hardly the stuff of Ar-money-a-geddon. Time’s on the movie’s side, given the fact that critics (84% on Rotten Tomatoes), audiences (A-minus on CinemaScore) and even Plugged In liked LEGO 2. Like the blocks themselves, this movie could still prove to be pretty durable.

The weekend was dominated by newcomers. What Men Want, an R-rated comedy starring Taraji P. Henson, nailed down second place with $19 million. Another freshman film, Liam Neeson’s darkly satirical thriller Cold Pursuit, scrambled into third with $10.8 million. The only new wide-release movie that didn’t make it into the top five was a horror flick, The Prodigy, which finished sixth with $6 million. But given that the movie only cost an estimated $6 million to make, its producers probably aren’t too upset.

Two durable holdovers closed out the top five. The Upside finished fourth with $7.2 million. And Glass, which had won the box-office crown for three straight weekends, plummeted all the way to fifth with $6.4 million. (But speaking of upside, Glass comes away with one of its own: The M. Night Shyamalan flick has now earned $98.5 million, and it should crack the $100 million barrier in the next few days.)

Next weekend, we’ll be keeping our eye on a new big-budget challenger, Alita: Battle Angel. But if early financial predictions are right, we could be looking a box-office bust that’ll likely make LEGO 2 feel a bit more awesome about its performance.