Weekend Estimates: Ice Age Delivers Cool $46 Million

July 15, 2012

Ice Age: Continental Drift will deliver a very solid $46 million over the weekend, according to Fox's Sunday morning estimate. While that's down quite a bit from the franchise's high point, The Meltdown's $68 million in 2006, it is up from the $41.7 million debut of Dawn of the Dinosaurs. If word-of-mouth is decent enough, the film should enjoy four weeks of relatively light direct competition, and might become the first title from the franchise to top $200 million domestically. Even more encouragingly for Fox, it's living up to the gigantic performances of its predecessors internationally, having already topped $200 million and broken a number of national records. The franchise as a whole has now cruised past $2 billion in global box office receipts and stands behind only Shrek among animated franchises.

The rest of the chart this weekend is all about holdovers. The Amazing Spider-Man fell a decent 44% and will top $200 million in 14 days, if Sony's projection holds. Ted will be down an even more impressive 31% and has moved past $150 million.

In limited release, Beasts of the Southern Wild continues to be the one to watch. It will rack up about $775,000 this weekend from 81 theaters for an average around $9,500. At this point, a nationwide rollout seems like a fair bet, although it will probably ultimately perform more along the lines of Bernie than The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.

- Weekend Estimates

Bruce Nash

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Bernie, The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Ted, Ice Age: Continental Drift, Beasts of the Southern Wild