Diego and Co. Makes It Again! “Ice Age” Tops Box Office While Batman Lurks

Diego and Co. Makes It Again! “Ice Age” Tops Box Office While Batman Lurks

Diego and the rest of the gang made it again!  With Batman lurking, the prehistoric characters of "Ice Age:  Continental Drift” ran off with the box office, earning $46 million in their opening weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The animated film from 20th Century Fox is the fourth of the “Ice Age” series and the first in 3-D. The North America performance of "Continental Drift" was on par with previous "Ice Age" movies.

There has now been a decade of "Ice Age" films, allowing the characters voiced by Ray Romano, Queen Latifah and John Leguizamo to become increasingly familiar to audiences, particularly international ones. The film had already done robust overseas business ahead of opening in the U.S. This weekend it earned $95 million internationally, bringing its overseas total to $339 million.

The "Ice Age" franchise has now surpassed $2.2 billion worldwide, and the studio expects "Continental Drift" to equal the global total of the last installment, 2009's "Dawn of the Dinosaurs," which took in $886.7 million.

The weekend was inevitably shadowed by two superheroes, coming a week after the debut of “The Amazing Spider-Man,” Sony's Spider-Man reboot and one week before the highly-anticipated Batman sequel, "The Dark Knight Rises."

Here is the list of the estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included.

1. "Ice Age: Continental Drift," $46 million ($95 million internationally)

2. "The Amazing Spider-Man," $35 million ($66.6 million internationally).

3. "Ted," $22.1 million, ($9.7 million internationally).

4. "Brave," $10.7 million, ($6.5 million internationally).

5. "Magic Mike," $9 million, ($3.3 million internationally).

6. "Savages," $8.7 million, ($1 million internationally).

7. "Tyler Perry's Madea's Witness Protection," $5.6 million.

8. "Katy Perry: Part of Me," $3.7 million, ($1 million internationally).

9. "Moonrise Kingdom," $3.7 million, ($270,000 internationally).

10. "Madagascar 3: Europe's Most Wanted," $3.5 million ($4.6 million internationally).

Posted by Kade Quinn on Tuesday July 17 2012, 4:02 AM EST. Ref: Reuters. All trademarks acknowledged. Filed under Entertainment, Featured News. Comments and Trackbacks closed. Follow responses: RSS 2.0