Faith-based film Heaven Is for Real soared at the Easter weekend box office, earning a stellar $21.5 million from 2,417 theaters to bury big-budget Transcendence, which opened to a dismal $11.5 million from 3,455 locations.
Transcendence marks the third big-budget bomb in a row for Johnny Depp after The Lone Ranger and Dark Shadows.
Captain America, staying at No. 1 for its third consecutive weekend, grossed $26.6 million from 3,825 locations to cross the $200 million mark domestically and hit $586.6 million worldwide in another major victory for Marvel Studios and Disney.
Fox's animated family film Rio 2 grossed $22.5 million from 3,975 locations in its second weekend for a domestic total of $75.4 million.
Heaven Is for Real, placing No. 3, is the latest Christian film to exceed expectations. Produced by influential pastor T. D. Jakes, director Randall Wallace and Hollywood veteran Joe Roth, Heaven Is for Real stars Greg Kinnear and earned an A CinemaScore. The drama did its biggest business in the country's Bible Belt, but appealed to mainstream audiences as well.
Easter weekend provided further evidence that 2014 is indeed the year of the Bible movies. Heaven Is for Real was one of three such titles populating the top 10 chart. Noah placed No. 9 with $5 million for a domestic cume of $93.2 million, while God's Not Dead came in No. 10 with $4.8 million, pushing its total to $48.2 million.
Heading into the weekend, no one expected the $12 million Heaven Is for Real to beat Transcendence, which cost a hefty $100 million to produce. Transcendence suffered from scathing reviews and a C+ CinemaScore.
Easter weekend saw two other new nationwide offerings -- A Haunted House 2 and Disney documentary Bears. Haunted House 2 placed No. 5 with $9.1 million from 2,310 theaters, half of the $18 million opening secured by the first film. Bears placed No. 11 with a less-than-expected $4.7 million from 1,720 theaters, the lowest opening of any Disneynature title.
Over the weekend, Frozen became the No. 6 title of all time worldwide with $1.129 billion in earnings, passing up The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.114 billion) and Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($1.123 billion). It has also passed up Ice Age 4 ($716 million) to become the top-grossing animated film at the international box office with $729.3 million.
Showing posts with label Frozen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Frozen. Show all posts
Monday, April 21, 2014
Thursday, April 17, 2014
MercyMe's New Release Is Welcomed to the Top 5
The unstoppable soundtrack to Disney's "Frozen" continues its run atop the Billboard 200 a 10th nonconsecutive week at No. 1. It sold 133,000 copies in the week ending April 13 down 11 percent.
The album’s cumulative sales also climb past the 2 million mark, as its additional 133,000 copies bring its to-date sum to 2.1 million.
"Frozen" is now one of just 11 albums to have spent at least 10 weeks at No. 1 since the chart started using SoundScan's point-of-sale data on May 25, 1991. Four of those 11 albums also happen to be soundtracks: “Frozen,” Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard" (20 weeks at No. 1), "Titanic" (16 weeks) and "The Lion King" (10 weeks).
In addition, "Frozen" now ties "The Lion King" for the most weeks at No. 1 for an animated film soundtrack.
At No. 2 on the latest Billboard 200 is Pharrell's "G I R L," which rebounds seven slots with 29,000. During the week, Pharrell performed on ABC's "Good Morning America," was profiled on CBS' "Sunday Morning" and he performed on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" on April 5.
MercyMe earns the chart's highest debut, as the group's "Welcome to the New" arrives at No. 4 with 26,000. It's the third top 10 effort for the act — and third in a row — following "The Hurt & the Healer" (No. 7 in 2012) and "The Generous Mr. Lovewell" (No. 3 in 2010).
On the Christian Albums chart, the new album gives MercyMe its eighth No. 1.
The album’s cumulative sales also climb past the 2 million mark, as its additional 133,000 copies bring its to-date sum to 2.1 million.
"Frozen" is now one of just 11 albums to have spent at least 10 weeks at No. 1 since the chart started using SoundScan's point-of-sale data on May 25, 1991. Four of those 11 albums also happen to be soundtracks: “Frozen,” Whitney Houston's "The Bodyguard" (20 weeks at No. 1), "Titanic" (16 weeks) and "The Lion King" (10 weeks).
In addition, "Frozen" now ties "The Lion King" for the most weeks at No. 1 for an animated film soundtrack.
At No. 2 on the latest Billboard 200 is Pharrell's "G I R L," which rebounds seven slots with 29,000. During the week, Pharrell performed on ABC's "Good Morning America," was profiled on CBS' "Sunday Morning" and he performed on NBC's "Saturday Night Live" on April 5.
MercyMe earns the chart's highest debut, as the group's "Welcome to the New" arrives at No. 4 with 26,000. It's the third top 10 effort for the act — and third in a row — following "The Hurt & the Healer" (No. 7 in 2012) and "The Generous Mr. Lovewell" (No. 3 in 2010).
On the Christian Albums chart, the new album gives MercyMe its eighth No. 1.
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
Disney Is Tolerant of Many Things in Its Movies... Except Religion... 'Frozen' Songwriters Reveal
The husband and wife team behind the Oscar-winning Frozen said on Thursday that while Disney is open to bringing songwriters from diverse backgrounds, religion is the only thing that they have seen censored since they have worked there.
Speaking on NPR's Fresh Air show, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez told host Terry Gross that some of the preconceptions outside of the industry folks might have about Disney may not be exactly true.
"Disney is not this sanitized place that you might imagine it to be. I mean, they hired Ashman and Menken after they did "Little Shop of Horrors," which was sort of the Avenue Q of its day. It was very campy and very kind of...a little off-color and racy. And I don't think Disney has any problem with employing people who have done off-color stuff in the past," Lopez, who co-wrote the satirical Book of Mormon, said.
Anderson-Lopez noted, "It's funny. One of the only places you have to draw the line at Disney is with religious things, the word God."
"Yeah. You just can't," agreed her husband.
A confused Gross followed up with her guests, asking "You can't say the word 'God'?"
Lopez hesitated, "There was even a... well, you can say it in Disney, but you can't put it in the movie," which his wife affirmed.
While Lopez and Anderson-Lopez refused to elaborate about Disney's religiosity, they freely shared about their inspiration for 'Let It Go.'
"Basically when this song came to us, we were on a little stroll through Prospect Park in Brooklyn near our house, and we both started to sort of improv what Elsa might be feeling like. So we stood up on picnic tables," said Lopez.
"We got very emo," continued Anderson-Lopez. "You know, we had been listening - we decided we didn't want this song to be a traditional Disney princess song."
"And actually it was Bobby who kept saying I feel like if I were a high school student, that this would be that moment that you had worked, and you'd studied, and you hadn't gone out, and then you just failed a test miserably. And what would that feel like? And he came up with the line," she added.
Gross later joked that parents "would probably prefer that their children sing [singing] 'hold it in, hold it in...'Like hold it back because sometimes you don't want kids to let it go because they're just going to be - they're so crazy as it is. Do you know what I mean? Like you want them to have a little bit of inhibition."
Anderson agreed with Gross' point but suggested a different message for the song that she saw as one she would share with her two children, who also sing on the Frozen soundtrack.
"That's true, but I think at the end of the day, letting - getting the message of don't allow fear or shame to keep you from being the person you should be, I imagine on a global level that's a good lesson for them to have before teenager-hood. If they've been living with fear and shame, and then it's really going to hit the fan."
Speaking on NPR's Fresh Air show, Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez told host Terry Gross that some of the preconceptions outside of the industry folks might have about Disney may not be exactly true.
"Disney is not this sanitized place that you might imagine it to be. I mean, they hired Ashman and Menken after they did "Little Shop of Horrors," which was sort of the Avenue Q of its day. It was very campy and very kind of...a little off-color and racy. And I don't think Disney has any problem with employing people who have done off-color stuff in the past," Lopez, who co-wrote the satirical Book of Mormon, said.
Anderson-Lopez noted, "It's funny. One of the only places you have to draw the line at Disney is with religious things, the word God."
"Yeah. You just can't," agreed her husband.
A confused Gross followed up with her guests, asking "You can't say the word 'God'?"
Lopez hesitated, "There was even a... well, you can say it in Disney, but you can't put it in the movie," which his wife affirmed.
While Lopez and Anderson-Lopez refused to elaborate about Disney's religiosity, they freely shared about their inspiration for 'Let It Go.'
"Basically when this song came to us, we were on a little stroll through Prospect Park in Brooklyn near our house, and we both started to sort of improv what Elsa might be feeling like. So we stood up on picnic tables," said Lopez.
"We got very emo," continued Anderson-Lopez. "You know, we had been listening - we decided we didn't want this song to be a traditional Disney princess song."
"And actually it was Bobby who kept saying I feel like if I were a high school student, that this would be that moment that you had worked, and you'd studied, and you hadn't gone out, and then you just failed a test miserably. And what would that feel like? And he came up with the line," she added.
Gross later joked that parents "would probably prefer that their children sing [singing] 'hold it in, hold it in...'Like hold it back because sometimes you don't want kids to let it go because they're just going to be - they're so crazy as it is. Do you know what I mean? Like you want them to have a little bit of inhibition."
Anderson agreed with Gross' point but suggested a different message for the song that she saw as one she would share with her two children, who also sing on the Frozen soundtrack.
"That's true, but I think at the end of the day, letting - getting the message of don't allow fear or shame to keep you from being the person you should be, I imagine on a global level that's a good lesson for them to have before teenager-hood. If they've been living with fear and shame, and then it's really going to hit the fan."
Monday, March 31, 2014
Stellar Kart to Release EP of 'Frozen' Covers
Like many people, Christian pop/rock band Stellar Kart has the songs from the Disney movie Frozen stuck in their collective head. And rather than "Let It Go," the group has decided to fully embrace the latest cartoon craze by releasing an EP of cover tunes from the smash hit.
On their Facebook page during the past week, Stellar Kart announced they will be releasing a Frozen EP on April 15, complete with "some of our favorite songs from the movie."
Lead singer Adam Agee is pretty excited about the results, according to a social media post of his own: "I'm fangirling right now. Seriously can't wait for you guys to hear this!!!"
The announcement comes just after another Christian artist covered Frozen. At a recent show in Michigan, Josh Wilson played the runaway hit song from the movie as an ode to the chilly temperatures there.
On their Facebook page during the past week, Stellar Kart announced they will be releasing a Frozen EP on April 15, complete with "some of our favorite songs from the movie."
Lead singer Adam Agee is pretty excited about the results, according to a social media post of his own: "I'm fangirling right now. Seriously can't wait for you guys to hear this!!!"
The announcement comes just after another Christian artist covered Frozen. At a recent show in Michigan, Josh Wilson played the runaway hit song from the movie as an ode to the chilly temperatures there.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)