LOS ANGELES -- Four new wide releases could not motivate moviegoers to hit theaters over the weekend in the lowest post-Super Bowl box office in 10 years.
Warner Bros.' The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part opened in first place with $35 million, well below analyst projections of $50 million to $55 million, according to estimates from measurement firm Comscore. The $99 million post-apocalyptic animation, which earned an 84 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes, is a sequel to 2014's The Lego Movie. That film opened with $69 million before taking in $469 million globally.
The Second Part was written by Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, the duo behind the The Lego Movie, but this time directing duties were taken by Mike Mitchell (The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water). In the sequel, Chris Pratt lends his vocal cords to ever-optimistic hero Emmet alongside Elizabeth Banks (his companion Lucy), Will Arnett (an absurd Batman) and an ensemble that includes Tiffany Haddish, Maya Rudolph and Jason Momoa, who voiced a brick version of his box office titan, Aquaman.
The movie brought in an additional $18.1 million overseas last weekend, according to the studio. Reviews have been generally favorable (with an 84 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes). But after an extremely weak Super Bowl weekend for ticket sales and a fairly quiet January, The Lego Movie 2 failed to give the box office the boost it needed. Last weekend's result seems to indicate that audiences are fatigued by the franchise after the spinoff The Lego Ninjago Movie (which took in a disappointing global haul of $123 million) failed to achieve the success of its predecessor The Lego Batman Movie, which grossed $312 million worldwide.
"The expectations were certainly much higher for The Lego Movie 2, considering the success of the first installment," said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Comscore. "We were all hoping that this would be the weekend that got the momentum of the box office going in the right direction. We're still waiting."
Every weekend this year has been down from the same weekend a year ago. That's a streak sure to continue. This weekend, the new releases include Happy Death Day 2U and Alita: Battle Angel. What opened the same weekend last year? Black Panther.
"Momentum is everything at the box office," Dergarabedian said. "And we've sort of lost that."
Until now, 2019's sluggish box office was partly blamed on lack of quality releases, with only a handful of highly promoted films from major studios.
Paramount's What Men Want debuted at No. 2 with $19 million, within range of analyst predictions of $18 million to $20 million.
A twist on 2000's Mel Gibson-led What Women Want, the $20 million What Men Want stars Taraji P. Henson as an ambitious sports agent who is suddenly plagued with the ability to hear men's thoughts. It earned a 48 percent "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
In third place, Lionsgate's Liam Neeson-led drama Cold Pursuit premiered with $10.8 million, slightly below the action star's most recent films The Commuter ($13.7 million last year) and Run All Night ($11 million in 2015).
Neeson recently came under fire after admitting during the film's press run to having considered engaging in a hate crime in retaliation for a friend's rape 40 years ago. However, the controversy doesn't seem to have affected the film's box office, which slightly exceeded expectations and earned a 74 percent "fresh" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
At No. 4, STX Entertainment's The Upside remained one of the few bright spots in the new year, dropping only 17 percent. It added $7.2 million in its fifth weekend for a cumulative $85.8 million.
Rounding out the top five, Universal's Glass added $6.4 million in its fourth weekend for a cumulative $98.5 million.
The final new release of the week, Orion Pictures' The Prodigy, came in at No. 6 with $6 million, just below analyst predictions of $7 million to $9 million. The evil-kid horror movie, starring Taylor Schilling (Orange Is the New Black) and Jackson Robert Scott (It), earned a 45 percent "Rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Columbia's Miss Bala dropped to No. 10 after just two weekends in theaters, adding $2.7 million for a cumulative $11.9 million.
In limited release, Focus Features opened Everybody Knows in four locations with $75,000 for a per-screen average of $18,743.
ShortsTV and Magnolia Pictures' 2019 Oscar-Nominated Short Films earned $912,000 on 265 screens (a per-screen average of $3,442), the distributor's widest and highest-grossing opening weekend in 14 years of releasing the shorts.
Sony Pictures Classics expanded Never Look Away into an additional location (for a total of three) in its third weekend with $40,465 for a per-screen average of $13,488 and a cumulative $109,438.
China's first big-budget space-movie spectacle The Wandering Earth bowed in China over the Chinese New Year holiday weekend with a staggering $172.7 million Friday to Sunday, and nearly $300 million since opening Feb. 5.
MovieStyle on 02/15/2019