As well-crafted as those little blocks are, you couldn’t expect LEGO to lock onto the top of the box office forever. This week, The LEGO Movie was finally pulled from its perch by two notable newcomers.
Non-Stop flew to the top box-office hill this weekend. Liam Neeson’s up-in-the-air thriller soared to an estimated $30 million and touched down in first place, again illustrating that you don’t mess with the actor when there’s a chill in the wind. Some of Neeson’s biggest hits—Taken, Unknown and The Grey, most notably—have been January or February flicks. In fact, Neeson is technically guilty of knocking off his own movie: He voiced the Good Cop/Bad Cop in LEGO.
Son of God (the movie) couldn’t overcome Neeson’s mighty box office power, but the Mark Burnett/Roma Downey biblical spectacle still did just fine for itself. Studio estimates have Son of God collecting $26.5 million when all the receipts are counted, and given that religious movies tend to make more money on Sundays than the typical secular flick, those estimates might be a little low. (We’ll see when the final tally is in later this afternoon.) But low or not, $26.5 mil is still a dandy payday for footage pulled from a year-old television miniseries. Box Office Mojo’s Ray Subers wrote, “Son of God’s success reinforces the notion that people go to the movies for more reasons than just the content on screen.” If Christian audiences were trying to send a message to Hollywood, consider the message delivered.
The LEGO Movie slid to No. 3 this week but still earned a tidy $21 million, bringing its 2014 North American gross to an awesome $209.3 mil.
The remainder of moviedom was pretty quiet this week, with fourth-place The Monuments Men making $5 million. 3 Days to Kill, a wintertime Liam Neeson-type movie starring Kevin Costner, finished fifth with $4.9 million.
Oh, and we should note that Frozen, Disney’s now Oscar-winning flick, made its one billionth dollar globally, becoming just the 18th movie in history to do so. That’s some ice, ice, baby.
Final figures update: 1. Non-Stop, $28.8 million; 2. Son of God, $25.6 million; 3. The LEGO Movie, $20.8 million; 4. 3 Days to Kill, $4.95 million; 5. The Monuments Men, $4.94 million. You’ll notice that almost everything was a bit lower than predicted (including Son of God) except for 3 Days to Kill, which made just a whisker more than The Monuments Men and moved into fourth place.
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