Foreign Accumulations

DWA's newest appears to be performing well.

... The Croods opened in another five markets over Easter weekend, including the U.K., where it took in $5 million. The family film placed No. 2 internationally for the weekend, earning $52.5 million for a foreign total of $140.5 million and worldwide cume of $229.1 million.

Croods is likewise benefiting from being presented in 3D. In Russia, for example, 72 percent of the gross is coming from higher-priced 2D tickets. ...

I would submit that the reason that The Croods is performing at normal DreamWorks Animation levels is because the cave persons' opus follows the DWA template in ways that Rise of the Guardians did not.

1) Emphasis on a group of wacky, somewhat shlubby characters
2) Go-getter hero/ heroine who drives plot
3) Life-threatening conundrum to resolve
4) Character arcs (i.e., one or more characters learn something and change)
5) And abundance of comedy and/or action

You will note thatROTG lacked many (but not all) of the above ingredients. Guardians' protagonists were super-natural beings with super-natural powers. (The Sandman "dies" but magically comes back to life, so little seems to be at stake.) Shlubbiness is at a minimum, ditto wacky comedy.

DWA's Recent Features

The Croods -- $227,271,000 (2 weeks)
Rise of Guardians -- $303,594,000 (19 weeks)
Puss in Boots -- $554,709,226 (18 weeks)
Madagascar e -- $742,110,251 (19 weeks)
How to Train Your Dragon -- $494,878,759 (17 weeks)

(You will note that DreamWorks Animation's sequels and character comedies have performed best over the past couple of years.)

Elsewhere on the foreign box office front, Bruce Willis and Dwayne Johnson have helped the GI Joe sequel leap off to a solid start. And Walt's Oz the Great and Powerful has skipped above the $200 million mark.