The Lego Movie 2 Is Making Less Money Than Expected

The Lego Movie 2

Everything is more OK than awesome for The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part. So far, it has gotten good reviews, but not as good as The LEGO Movie, and its box office is even more of a drop.

According to Variety, The LEGO Movie 2 is still expected to top the box office at the end of this opening weekend, but with an estimated domestic gross of $31 million from 4,303 theaters. (That's a lot of screens.) The film had been tracking for something closer to $50 million, so this revised estimate is a bit of a disappointment.

As Box Office Mojo noted, if The LEGO Movie 2 does have a $30 million opening, that would be a drop of more than 50% off the debut of the 2014 film.

There have been four LEGO movies in the current film franchise so far. For comparison, here are the domestic box office openings:

The LEGO Movie - 2014 - $69 million

The LEGO Batman Movie - 2017 - $53 million

The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part - 2019 - $31 million (estimate)

The LEGO Ninjago Movie - 2017 - $20 million

CinemaBlend will have a full box office rundown tomorrow, but The LEGO Movie 2 is still expected to be the #1 movie. It just sounds like the weekend will be quieter than hoped (but at least not as quiet as last week's Super Bowl slumbertown). We know the 2019 box office is going to kick into high gear soon, but ... not this weekend soon.

Taraji P. Henson's What Men Want is expected to take second place on the February 8-10 box office chart with an opening in the $18 million range, with Liam Neeson's Cold Pursuit earning over $10 million, and The Prodigy grossing somewhere around $6 million.

The LEGO Movie 2 brings back Chris Pratt to voice construction worker Emmet Brickowski -- and he also takes on the new role of Rex Dangervest -- with Elizabeth Banks back as Lucy/Wyldstyle, and Will Arnett returning as Batman.

Phil Lord and Christopher Miller directed The LEGO Movie and said everyone told them not to make a sequel. But they came back to write the screenplay for and produce The LEGO Movie 2, with Mike Mitchell now as director.

So far, fans seem to be enjoying the LEGO sequel -- it currently has an 84% Audience Score on Rotten Tomatoes, the exact same score critics gave it, plus a 7.4/10 user rating at IMDb. That's fine, it's just not doing as well as the first one. It happens.

Check out our 2019 movie calendar to stay up-to-date on what else is playing in movie theaters right now, and to see what's coming soon as the 2019 schedule starts to get very busy.

Gina Carbone

Gina grew up in Massachusetts and California in her own version of The Parent Trap. She went to three different middle schools, four high schools, and three universities -- including half a year in Perth, Western Australia. She currently lives in a small town in Maine, the kind Stephen King regularly sets terrible things in, so this may be the last you hear from her.