Rio 2 just missed winning the weekend box office, taking in $39 million to the Captain America sequel’s $41.4 million. Box Office Mojo notes its take was “essentially identical to the first Rio’s $39.2 million debut around the same time in 2011. Among recent animated movies, it’s noticeably higher than Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 ($34 million) and Mr. Peabody & Sherman ($32.2 million)… With the Easter holiday coming up—and without any serious family competition for a long, long time Rio 2 should hold well. It’s possible that it eventually matches the first movie’s $143.6 million total.
But the bigger prize for Blue Sky Studios may come oversees. Buzzfeed reports that while none of their movies “have made much of a box office impact in the U.S., not even the Ice Age movies, the studio’s marquee franchise… the box office picture radically changes, however, when looking at how much money animated feature films make overseas. Two of the all-time top five highest foreign grosses for animated films have been from Blue Sky: Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs, with $690.1 million, and the fourth and most recent movie in that franchise, 2012’s Ice Age: Continental Drift, with $715.9 million, which is the best foreign box office take ever for an animated film to date. Yes, even better than Frozen (although that will change likely this week). Blue Sky’s movies do so well overseas that, on average, they gross more worldwide than DreamWorks Animation”.