'Ice Age 3' Soars Up International Box Office List

In my review of Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs I wrote that it "moves pleasantly along, doesn’t make anyone think too hard, and looks good, even in 3-D. For 90 minutes, it gets your kids out of the heat." And that formula has definitely been successful: The animated flick is now the third-highest-grossing movie in history when you look at the international markets. Ice Age made about $200 million here in the states but it's now over $660 million overseas, making it not only the third-biggest movie of the year internationally, but behind only Titanic and Return of the King in terms of foreign ticket sales. Phenomenal. It's still doing very well overseas, placing third on the international top ten last weekend and in the process surpassing both the third Pirates movie and the first Harry Potter entry to secure its place in history. Fox had already steered the film well beyond every other animated release ever internationally, and its percentage of foreign dollars versus domestic - less than 25% of its revenue comes from the US. It's now closing in on the top 15 movies in terms of total receipts, with about $850 million generated since July 1st. To get into the top ten, it would have to cross $920 million, and that seems unlikely. But it would move past Shrek 2 on the all-time list if it were able to pull that off. Here's where the numbers get messy, though: Shrek 2 and Finding Nemo were much bigger successes in America, so their global numbers are higher even though they have been overmatched in the foreign marketplace. But it's very likely that Ice Age will at least crack $900 million, putting it right behind Jurassic Park on the worldwide list. Last weekend, we put Ice Age on our list of the five real winners at the summer box office, a list that did not include the much more expensive Transformers and Harry Potter precisely because they cost so much to make and market. Ice Age, like The Hangover, is about to cross the 1000% profit barrier based on production costs alone. With marketing, that probably drops to about four times its total cost earned back in a couple of months. In fact, it's already passed Transformers in total revenue, with much less advertising and hoopla. Let's also not overlook what this could mean for the viability of 3-D films in the future.