$39.2m/$220m

I don't think China is the only reason it has been increasing list three weekends. Even without China I think it will do close to $300m OS. Looking at $400m OS total now.

Impressive run so far

$60.1m/$301.9m

$14.1m opening in Russia, $8.3m opening in Australia...

$60 m weekend??

Life of Pi has been overshadowed by a lot of other movies over the holidays, but its going to get to $500 m + ww with basically no stars. Depending on holds, may even push toward $600 m. What a phenomenal performance!

The success is so deserving. A phenomenal movie.

Its OS numbers (excluding China) are even more impressive than domestic numbers. This is a very difficult subject matter to sell and Fox turned this into a must see 3D-experience after which the WOM took over.

Fox knows how to sell movies overseas.

Doing great in Russia. $14 m in 5 days. 3 more days of holidays to go. Expected this to clear $20 m, but not $30 m. The book sales were real good - published 3 times before the film, and 1 more with the film. You don't see that very often.

Do we need to read a book or it's the same?

P.S. The book's overall circulation is 20,000. Just checked Russia's #1 torrent - the audiobook was downloaded over 7000 times.

Wouldn't know actually. Been wanting to read the book since forever but I never got to it. But after the movie I'll definitely check it out.

I found the movie decent, not great. Haven't read the book (though gave it to my girlfriend for Christmas - she is reading it before seeing the film now).

A friend that I saw the film with is reading the book now and she is finding it much better than the film.

Yeah even with so many movies from Sony it is being reported that Fox won in OS total for 2012.

From BO.com, $357.4m overseas now.

After a $35.9 million weekend.

What a TREMENDOUS overseas performance. More impressive to me than The Hobbit's to be frank.

It's looking at at least $550 million worldwide.

Well no doubt. It sounds weird to describe an impending $1B grosser as disappointing, but TH really should have had no problem breaking at least $800m overseas with foreign market expansion + 3D since ROTK.

Pi's run has been simply phenomenal and has overperformed in pretty much every market.

$20.7m/$393.9m

Are there anymore big markets left for its release?

Japan.

This is headed for $450 million overseas.

HUMONGOUS

Wow. $450m might happen with holdovers itself if Oscar bumps continues to make it hold better. Here in Singapore it is expanding this weekend which could be true for quite a few markets.

Non-franchise films (Non-sequels and films that didn't spawn sequels) that made over $450 million in the overseas markets:


Titanic - $1.526 billion
Alice in Wonderland - $690.1 million
2012 - $603.6 million
Finding Nemo - $540.9 million
Inception - $533 million
Independence Day - $511.2 million
Mamma Mia! - $465.7 million

Considering most of these were family films and action films with well-proven hooks, this makes Life of Pi (Which didn't have any proven draws or obvious hooks) all the more impressive. Amazing how such a big gamble for Fox ended up paying off in spades. Ang Lee must be so happy.

its drops have been exemplary. if it continues to drop in 30 something percentage it will make around 460M from just holdovers. Plus around 115-120M from domestic. So it will require 20-25m from japan to hit 600M WW.

While LOP B.O is very impressive it was based on a popular book, so it did have a hook.

Independence Day, Finding Nemo and Alice in Wonderland are getting sequels so either they need to get off the list above, or Avatar needs to get back on it

The sequels for those three are simply in development still, with almost no new recent development (Actually, wasn't ID4-2 canceled?). Avatar 2 at least has a release date (Even if it seems like it won't make it as of now), hence why I decided to not include it.

Avatar should absolutely be in there. As well as many others. Just because it was successful and spawned sequels it shouldn't be excluded from the list.