Are you ready for Movie Monday, kids?
I can’t heeear you!
After three weeks as the biggest movie in the land, American Sniper just couldn’t get his absorbent, yellow opponent in its crosshairs. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water indeed established a beachhead on the box office shores and charged up the cinematic mountain, surprising the entertainment community with an estimated $56 million take. That’s a lot of Krabby Patties.
Sniper finished second with $24.2 million, but don’t feel too bad for Clint Eastwood’s R-rated phenom. It just became the third highest-grossing flick released in 2014 (it opened in a few theaters Christmas weekend) with a total haul of $282.3 million so far—trailing only The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 ($335.7 million) and Guardians of the Galaxy ($333.2 million). It’s just about a thousand bucks away (I kid you not) from surpassing the combined grosses of all its Academy Award Best Picture competitors. Oh, and it’s also the second-biggest R-rated movie ever, behind 2004’s The Passion of the Christ ($370.3 million).
The weekend’s two other newcomers didn’t fare nearly as well. Jupiter Ascending, the latest effort from the Wachowski siblings to recapture their Matrix magic, landed in third place with a planetary thud. It made just $19 million in North America. Considering the Wachowskis spent an estimated $176 million to make it, Jupiter’s got some ascending still to do. (It’s showing a little more muscle overseas with a $32.5 million take, so that might help.)
Still, Jupiter looked like an out-of-this-world smash compared to Seventh Son, which settled into fourth place with $7.1 million. Box Office Mojo notes that that’s even worse than I, Frankenstein did last year around the same time ($8.6 million).
Another family movie joined SpongeBob in the Top Five. After four weeks, Paddington’s still strolling right along, earning $5.4 million for a fifth-place finish. And given how much folks like it, there might be some strength left in those furry legs. Paddington holds a 98% “freshness” rating on Rotten Tomatoes—better than most of 2015’s Oscar nominees, and only Boyhood and Selma could muster even a tie. Not bad for a marmalade-addled bear.
Final figures update: 1. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water, $55.4 million; 2. American Sniper, $23.3 million; 3. Jupiter Ascending, $18.4 million; 4. Seventh Son, $7.2 million. Project Almanac squeezed just in front of Paddington for fifth place, earning $5.23 million to Paddington’s $5.22 million.
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