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The updated worldwide grosses rankings show that Rango (Paramount) has slightly expanded its lead (with more room to grow) and that Battle: Los Angeles (Sony) is poised to challenge The Green Hornet (also Sony) for #2.
Hop (Disney) enters the chart in the top 10, at #8, with some serious upside in the coming weeks. It will probably finish just behind Rango, although it could make the race for the top of the January-April rankings interesting. Perhaps even more interesting is another animated, anthropomorphic animal movie, Rio (Fox), which opened this weekend with a dazzling $55 million overseas. It will enter the chart next week when we have North American results. In any case, talking lizards, bunnies and birds will end up dominating the top 5 worldwide.
Fox originally planned to open Rio worldwide April 8, but decided to shift North America to the less crowded weekend of April 15. However, the international dates were set, and we have the unusual instance of a film opening wide outside its home territory first.
Rank ($ millions) Impact
LW TW Worldwide Domestic Overseas Index
2 2 Green Hornet 228 99 130 +3
3 3 Battle: Los Angeles 194 89 105* +3
4 4 Just Go with It 194 106 88 -1
5 5 Gnomeo and Juliet 179 101 78 -1
6 6 No Strings Attached 143 71 72 +4
8 9 Unknown 126 75 51
11 12 Justin Bieber: Never 92 73 19 -3
12 13 The Rite 88 32 56 +11
13 14 Season of the Witch 82 25 58 +15
15 17 Sanctum 78 30 48 +9
21 18 Sucker Punch 70 38 32* +5
17 19 The Dilemma 67 48 18 -2
20 22 Diary Wimpy Kid 2 59 59 0 -8
— 23 Source Code 56 50 6* -8
22 24 Red Riding Hood 54 39 15* -2
— 25 Insidious 49 49 0 -9
25 28 The Roommate 41 41 0 -7
26 29 The Eagle 35 21 13 +1
TOTAL Jan-Apr Movies 3023 1832 1191*
Not included in the rankings yet, Rio earned $55 million this past weekend overseas, before its North American release Friday.
The worldwide box office ranking now includes movies released in 2011 through April 1. (Hop (Disney), Source Code (Summit), and Insidious (FilmDistrict) have been added to the ranking.) As noted before, Hop looks to be a player internationally, while Source Code and Insidious will struggle to find an overseas audience, partly because of their genres but also because they are not affiliated with a major studio.
The total numbers at the bottom of the chart show that worldwide box office has crossed the $3 billion line, in this, the weakest third of the year. A reminder, we divide the year into thirds (Winter/Spring movies released between January and April, Summer Movies between May and August, and Fall/Holiday movies between September and December). We will chart the January-April movies through the end of May, when we will start tracking the international audience for the May-August films.
Check back tomorrow for a look at the mid-week domestic performance of movies currently in release (a combined look at Monday and Tuesday numbers).
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