Nickandmore!

Nickelodeon and Paramount can breathe a sigh of relief this morning. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water opened over the weekend to approximately $56 million. Compare that to the $32 million opening weekend for the first movie in November 2004, when the franchise was arguably more popular.

SpongeBob opened the same weekend as The Lego Movie did last February, but couldn’t quite reach that movie’s $69 million opening weekend total.

Box Office Mojo reports that the movie’s audience was 53% male and 60% under age 25.

With little comparable family competition in the next few weeks, expect SpongeBob to continue dominating the box office. It will most certainly pass the 2004 movie’s domestic gross of $85 million easily.