The ‘Playmobil’ Movie Had One of the Worst Opening Weekends Ever
Did you ever really want a LEGO set for your birthday, and then wind up getting a Playmobil set instead? That’s kind of what happened at the box office this weekend.
Playmobil: The Movie premiered in U.S. theaters this weekend, based on the children’s building toy. Warner Bros. has had enormous success cranking out LEGO movies over the last couple years. Their four LEGO flicks have grossed more than $500 million in the U.S. alone. The Playmobil movie did ... worse than that. Like, a lot worse.
In fact, the film grossed an estimated $660,000 for the weekend. According to Box Office Mojo, this is a historically bad performance — the third-worst total ever for a movie opening on over 2,000 screens:
In terms of the week's lone new wide release, STX's Playmobil is hardly registering, delivering an estimated $167,000 from 2,337 locations, with current expectations for a three-day that won't even hit $800k. Should it manage to hit $800k, we're looking at a $342 per theater average, which ranks among the worst openings of all-time and would serve as the fourth worst opening average ever for a film debuting in over 2,000 locations (third worst if you don't count the re-release of Saw five years ago).
The other lowest grosses for wide releases were also poorly received children’s films: Delgo ($511,000) and The Oogieloves in the Big Balloon Adventure ($443,000). Kids movies are typically among the most dependable genres in theaters. But when they go bad, they go reeeeeally bad.
Playmobil: The Movie cost a reported $40 million to make, and featured a voice cast full of recognizable names, including Anya Taylor-Joy, Daniel Radcliffe, Adam Lambert, Kenan Thompson, and Jim Gaffigan. The film has grossed about $12 million overseas to date, which isn’t great, but is at least a little better than its domestic performance so far. I’m going to go out on a limb and say we probably won’t see Playmobile: The Movie 2.
Gallery — The Scariest Kids Movies of All Time: