It crossed the mark on Saturday. Weekend totals have been consistently better than Prince Caspian‘s weekend totals over the last four weeks. The first three weekends of release, it was doing a quite a bit less, though the third week was the first week that it started to do better than Caspian over each seven day period.
Looking at international box office, it’s closing in on Prince Caspian‘s foreign totals, and should top it when the film releases in Japan next month.
According to Box Office Mojo, it’s the first 20th Century Fox film to break $100 million since Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeequel, about 13 months ago.
There is more to take into account: G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra and Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. Paramount is moving forward with a sequel to G.I. Joe, whose budget was $175 million, and wordwide take was $302 million (half came from domestic U.S.). The reason? Merchandising. G.I. Joe has been around for a few generations, and is a very recognizable property. Hasbro and Paramount want to keep the franchise alive.
As for Disney’s Prince of Persia, it had a budget of $200 million and a domestic U.S. take of $90. Worldwide it came in at $335 million, total. It’s not going to get a sequel, however. The merchandising for the movie didn’t do well outside of theaters, likely also on account of the very soft United States launch.
If you look at budgets, total box office takes and merchandising, then you can see where various properties sit pretty well. Dawn Treader, unfortunately, didn’t have much merchandise for in-store branding. During the Christmas season, the time when toy stores see more traffic than any other time of the year, they could have been in front of millions with incredible Dawn Treader displays and playsets with Dufflepuds, the Dawn Treader, a Serpent, a Dragon and more.
That said can be corrected now that there are three movies in the franchise. If a fourth film is announced, a toy company can create an entire line of Narnian action figures and playsets covering all four films. Personally, I think it’s made enough worldwide to give us hope for another Narnia film. Especially when you take into account the budget of ~$155 million, which was at least $80 million less than the cost of Prince Caspian.