This is going to become a weekly thing, hopefully, to keep you all up to date on how animated films are doing at the box office. If there are other weekly news stories you would like to see involving animation, let me know and I'll see what I can do. (Also, don't forget, you have 6 days left to submit something to the Frozen contest!)

Please keep in mind that most of this information, especially for newer films, is limited to the United States. Each weekend after this, as films expand to foreign territories, I'll be giving updates for international grosses as well.

This weekend, the top movie was, not surprisingly, The Lego Movie. Analysts predicted prior to the weekend that the family-friendly, critically-acclaimed film would gross anywhere from $50 million to $70 million, and despite it being the first weekend of the Winter Olympics, it has already grossed an estimated $69.1 million. Keep in mind, this is just the studio estimate, and that number can be off by as much as 3%, but it's still a very close guess. And at any rate, that's easily the 2nd best February opening of all time (after The Passion of the Christ in 2004). It currently has a 98% rating on film review site RottenTomatoes, which is about on par with Toy Story 3, and actually higher than Frozen..That, combined with this tremendous opening weekend, makes it possible for The Lego Movie to be one of the best animated films of the year - and it's only February!

Frozen continues to be in the Top 5 at the box office, both domestically and internationally. No film has been in the Top 5 for this long since Avatar, and if it stays for one more weekend, it will pass even that! Analysts predicted prior to the weekend that it would be in 5th Place and gross about $5 million domestically. Well, it has done even better than that: 4th Place, and sitting at almost $7 million. On top of that, it opened up to a hefty estimated $40 million in China, and combined with other foreign territories, it has passed the $900 million mark internationally. It's now sitting at $913 million internationally, and about $368 million domestically. It should have no problem passing the $1 billion internationally, and $400 million domestically (often the "true" sign of a blockbuster hit) isn't out of the quesiton.

At #8 domestically is The Nut Job. Unfortunately, this film hasn't really gotten much success; it has a tremendously low rating on RottenTomatoes, and its international (worldwide) total is a meager $58 million. It's been in theaters for a month now, and has barely scraped up what The Lego Movie made in 2 days. It's unlikely to gain much more money than this, so expect it to finish at about $70 million total.

That's it for the box office this weekend! Come back next week and I'll give updates on all these films, and as new ones come out I'll talk about them as well!