Box Office: Sacha Baron Cohen’s ‘Brothers Grimsby’ Is Worst Flop of His Career

Disney’s animated smash hit Zootopia ruled the box office for a second consecutive weekend this week while the thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane performed solidly and Sacha Baron Cohen’s raunchy The Brothers Grimsby tanked in its first weekend of release.

Zootopia, which earned a sterling A CinemaScore, hauled in an estimated $50 million over the weekend to bring its worldwide cume to more than $430 million. The family film dropped off just 33% from its opening weekend in the U.S. and scored a record $109 million from China, according to the Hollywood Reporter.

10 Cloverfield Lane, a blood relative of the 2008 monster movie Cloverfield, took in an impressive $25.2 million playing at 3,391 theaters. The J.J. Abrams-produced thriller followed its predecessor in revealing very few details of its plot during its marketing campaign, and audiences responded by heading to theaters to check it out.

Meanwhile, according to Box Office Mojo, the “true flop” of the weekend was British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen’s raunchy actioner The Brothers Grimsby, which took in a paltry $3.2 million from 2,235 theaters. With a production budget of $35 million, that return makes Grimsby the comedian’s worst-ever opening weekend at the box office. The film earned a B+ CinemaScore and sits at just 38% on ratings aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

Baron Cohen appeared as his film character and donned a “Make America Great Again” cap at Grimsby‘s Westwood premiere last week, where he lit into Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, calling him “the ultimate soccer hooligan” for the violence that left-wing protesters have brought to his rallies.

A joke toward the end of Grimsby finds Trump contracting AIDS. The Huffington Post reported earlier this month that Sony executives were worried about blowback from the billionaire candidate and so scaled back the film’s marketing efforts in the U.S. The film has fared slightly better overseas, taking in $11.2 million for a worldwide total of $14.4 million.

Elsewhere at the box office, Focus Features’ The Young Messiah slightly disappointed with $3.4 million from 1,761 screens. The film, about a year in the life of 7-year-old Jesus Christ, earned a solid A- CinemaScore and sits at at a pretty good 63% on RottenTomatoes.

At the specialty box office, Bleecker Street’s Eye in the Sky debuted to $117,050 from just five theaters for a dazzling per-theater average of $23,410. The Gavin Hood-directed drone warfare thriller earned a stellar 95% on RottenTomatoes.

Read the weekend’s full box office results at Box Office Mojo here. And be sure to read Breitbart News’ interviews with The Young Messiah director Cyrus Nowrasteh and Eye in the Sky director Gavin Hood.