Ratatouille Slides to Five
Disney/Pixar Movie Stays in Top 5, Pulls $10.9 Million
Ratatouille slid to fifth place in Box Office Mojo's standings, but passed the $160 million mark. The rodent comedy from CGI powerhouse Pixar displayed some decent “legs,” staying in the Top Five and taking an additional $10.9 million to its coffers. This is very good news for the boys in Emeryville, since Ratatouille has now made back its studio costs ($150 million, according to the Mouse House). Although Ratatouille hasn’t made the same amount of coin that its predecessor Cars did, those are some solid numbers indeed.
Let’s just say that, if this were a DreamWorks Animation picture, Jeffrey Katzenberg would be green-lighting a Ratatouille 2 right now.
Looking farther down the list, DreamWorks’ Shrek the Third raked in another $384,000, and settled at #18. The third installment in the Shrek franchise has now pulled $318 million from moviegoers; lower than its predecessor (the 3rd highest grosser of all time) but nothing to sneeze at nonetheless.
This weekend gave Disney’s Meet the Robinsons a nice boost: it leaped from #52 to #26 in the charts, and threw another $220,000 into its moneybags. Unfortunately, this latest surge still hasn’t put the flick over the $100 million mark in domestic box office. It’s stuck at $97 million and seems destined to stay that way.
That said, Disney’s woes over Meet the Robinsons are nothing compared to Sony’s Surf’s Up, which is now just below Meet the Robinsons in the standings. Just to give you an idea, Meet the Robinsons came out 10 weeks before Surf’s Up did and that Disney flick has already been labeled a disappointment.
Surf’s Up has yet to make $60 million at the domestic box office, and is now stalled at $57 million. Sony hasn’t released how much it cost them to make this flick and, considering how badly it’s doing, I doubt they ever will. I’m sure Sony executives are now playing the “blame game,” trying to determine who can get out of taking responsibility for this cock-up. Considering star Shia LaBeouf is also headlining the mucho-selling, block-busting Transformers, it’s safe to say that this movie’s problems ain’t originating with the casting, people.
Turning our attention to anime, Paprika is at #50 on the box office chart, having made a grand $720,000 over its nine weeks in theatres. That said, the Japanese film has only been in 32 theatres during its run, far below Ratatouille’s 3,402 theatre count.
As I may have mentioned once or twice before, July 27th sees the last big animated flick of the summer coming to theatres. I refer to, of course, The Simpsons Movie. Will it become the reigning champ of summer? Or is it coming 5 years too late? Stay tuned and find out.
