The Steeple Chase in Foreign Lands

It rankles some that TAG Blog dwells on grosses foreign and domestic, but it's the way the entertainment conglomerates keep score ... and plan their next moves.

And animated features continue to burrow deep into the various money pits overseas.

The year's biggest foreign grosser to date, "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs," added $10.8 million, drawn from 5,000 screens in 39 markets, to boost its international total to $657.5 million. Distributor Fox said the animation title is the fourth-largest overseas grosser in industry history, on pace by the middle of the week to take the No. 3 all-time spot behind only 1997's "Titanic" ($1.24 billion) and 2003's "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" ($742 million).

Pixar/Disney's "Up" continues its marathon overseas run with an $8.6 million weekend from 2,576 locations in 32 territories, raising its foreign cume to $168.9 million ...

Short of the sun prematurely reaching its red star phase, it's a safe bet that Pixar will be turning out a lot more films, that James Brooks and Matt Groening will (someday) get around to making The Simpsons Movie 2, and that Fox will tee up one more movie with big furry elephants in it. As the Wise Old Hollywood Exec said to me recently at lunch:

"Fox will produce another Ice Age, and they'll do it their usual way: hire a new animation crew like always, reinvent their production pipe line again, and spend less than DreamWorks Animation and Pixar do ..."

So far, it's been a winning production formula. Even if there are a few kinks in it.