EARLY FRIDAY BOX OFFICE: Everything Is Awesome For “The Lego Movie”

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2014 has its first smash hit, as preliminary numbers at Deadline give THE LEGO MOVIE (Warners) a huge $18M Friday.  Since Saturday matinees should only boost the family-oriented animated comedy-adventure, that should bring it over $60M for the weekend, and with the Presidents Day holiday dead ahead and no other family movie on the horizon for a solid month (when Mr. Sherman & Peabody opens), Lego has every chance of going over $200M in the US, a tremendous result for a picture that only cost $60M or so to produce.

In second place but far back is George Clooney’s THE MONUMENTS MEN (Sony), with $7M on Friday.  That film should also fare well on Saturday thanks to its older audience, and could go over $20M for the weekend, a fair result but one that will still require international success to take it over breakeven.

VAMPIRE ACADEMY (Weinstein) was clearly headed nowhere–its studio was so desperate to put off bad word of mouth that it didn’t even allow Thursday midnight screenings–and $1.5M on Friday will put it south of $5M for the weekend, another would-be YA franchise that didn’t happen.

RIDE ALONG (Universal) leads the holdovers with $2.6M on Friday and a likely $8-9M weekend, which will take it over the $100M mark.  FROZEN (Disney) may also hit a milestone, its $1.5M Friday and $6M weekend pulling it even with and perhaps past Despicable Me 2‘s $368M as the biggest animated movie (in the US) to open in 2013.  

THAT AWKWARD MOMENT (Focus/Universal) fell 60% from last Friday to $1.6M, although that percentage will level out to 40-50% over the weekend because this Sunday will be considerably stronger than last week’s Super Bowl Sunday.  LONE SURVIVOR (Universal) is still holding well, down 40% Friday-to-Friday to $1.3M.  LABOR DAY (Paramount) dropped more than 50% from last Friday to $900K and may get to $3M for the weekend.