The franchise-establishing LEGO Movie topped the box office charts for the third weekend in a row with an estimated $31.4 million, which easily buried two newcomers McG’s 3 Days to Kill and Paul W.S. Anderson’s lava and sandals disaster film Pompeii.  In spite of the two disappointing debuts, Hollywood’s winning streak continued with the total of the top 12 films up 10.9% from the same weekend last year when the R-rated hit comedy Identity Thief bowed with $34.5 million.  Also this weekend anime grandmaster Hayao Miyazaki’s final film The Wind Rises opened in 21 theaters.
 
The LEGO Movie dropped just 36.9% and brought its domestic total to $183.2 million.  It is now apparent that this is the dominant movie of Q1 2014.  The LEGO Movie’s $31.5 million total is the second best third week total ever for an animated movie, trailing only Shrek 2’s $37.9 million.  It is certainly no surprise that Warner Bros. has announced that a sequel to The LEGO Movie will hit theaters during the Memorial Day weekend in 2017. 
 
3 Days to Kill, is based on a story by French director Luc Besson, who produced the film for Relativity Media.  The template for this film is another Besson-produced effort, Taken, with Kevin Costner standing in for Liam Neeson.  Fortunately 3 Days to Kill cost just $28 million to make, since its estimated $12.3 million is on the disappointing side, especially given a TV advertising campaign that included an expensive Super Bowl spot.  The opening weekend audience for 3 Days to Kill was evenly divided by gender and skewed older, with 80% over 25.  They gave the film a mediocre “B” CinemaScore, which doesn’t augur well for its future prospects, nor does the fact that 3 Days will have to go toe-to-toe with Liam Neeson’s new thriller Non-Stop next weekend.
 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): February 21-23, 2014
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	The LEGO Movie	$31,450,000	3,890	$8,085	$183,160,000	3
2	3 Days to Kill	$12,300,000	2,872	$4,283	$12,300,000	1
3	Pompeii	$10,010,000	2,658	$3,766	$10,010,000	1
4	RoboCop	$9,400,000	3,372	$2,788	$43,600,000	2
5	The Monuments Men	$8,100,000	3,064	$2,644	$58,050,000	3
6	About Last Night	$7,400,000	2,253	$3,285	$38,150,000	2
7	Ride Along	$4,667,000	2,186	$2,135	$123,173,000	6
8	Frozen	$4,357,000	1,891	$2,304	$384,061,000	14
9	Endless Love	$4,301,000	2,896	$1,485	$20,142,000	2
10	Winter's Tale	$2,130,000	2,965	$718	$11,224,000	2

About the only good thing one could say concerning the opening of Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii is that it represents a slight improvement over 2014’s first sword and sandal epic, The Legend of Hercules, which could manage just $8.7 million compared with Pompeii’s estimated $10 million.  But Pompeii cost $100 million and it opened below Anderson’s Resident Evil movies.  The movie may do well internationally, where it brought in $22.7 million from 37 territories, but it lacked star power in the domestic market.  Lead actor Kit Harington’s stellar work on Game of Thrones evidently doesn’t translate to big screen interest.  Pompeii attracted an audience that was 52% male and 62% over 30.
 
Jose Padhilla’s Robocop remake tumbled 57% in its second frame, which is not a bad drop for an action film, except for the fact that the film didn’t open very well as it debuted in third place last week.  Still Robocop has made $43.6 million domestically and $100 million overseas, which means that the $100 million movie is not a total flop, but still has a long way to go to attain profitability.
 
George Clooney’s WW II drama The Monuments Men landed in fifth place with an estimated $8.1 million, which brings its 17-day total to $58 million.  In spite of poor reviews, The Monuments Men has demonstrated some solid "legs," at least so far.
 
The three “romance-themed” films that debuted on Valentine’s Day all suffered near 70% drops in the second weekend.  The most successful of the lot, the remake of About Last Night dropped 71.1% and ended up in sixth place with an estimated $7.4 million, while Endless Love landed in ninth with an estimated $4.3 million, and Winter’s Tale dropped to tenth with just $2.1 million in ticket sales.
 
Miyazaki’s last film The Wind Rises, a controversial biopic about the designer of Japanese Zero fighter plane, was attacked politically in Japan from the right and the left as well as by anti-tobacco groups upset at the amount of cigarette smoking in the animated film.  Of course The Wind Rises is not intended for the same audience as My Neighbor Totoro, and it should be interesting to see if Miyazaki’s growing name recognition among American moviegoers can make The Wind Rises one of his more successful American releases.  It will be an uphill battle, but opening in just 21 locations, The Wind Rises managed a solid $14,571 per venue, and earned a solid "A-" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.  Miyazaki’s final film expands to 450 theaters next week so it should be interesting to see how it fares in wider release.
 
Be sure and check back here next week to see how The Wind Rises does, and to find out if Liam Neeson’s Non-Stop can reverse the slump in the action movie category and actually challenge The LEGO Movie for box office supremacy.