LOS ANGELES (AP) – “Kung Fu Panda 3” kicked its way to the top of the North American box office with a respectable $41 million, according to Rentrak estimates Sunday.
The DreamWorks Animation film cost a reported $145 million to make and earned a strong “A” CinemaScore from audiences – 70 percent of whom were families.
“It’s a bold move to take a franchise which has had great success in that summer corridor and move it into late January, which is generally considered a very slow time,” Rentrak’s senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian said. “It also filled a huge void in the marketplace.”
The first film opened to $60.2 million in 2008 and the second to $47.7 million in 2011.
For Fox, switching up the release was a no-brainer after seeing the successes of “The Lego Movie” and last year’s “The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water” in this time frame.