‘Megamind’ less than a mega-success overseas

DreamWorks Animation has often relied on outsized foreign ticket sales for its movies that aren’t hits at home. But “Megamind� is proving as unimpressive overseas as it has been domestically.

The latest big-budget 3-D release from the Glendale animation studio has, over the last two months, opened in every major foreign market except South Korea and Japan and now has a tepid total international gross of $134.5 million.

Foreign ticket sales for “Megamind,� a comedy about a supervillain turned good, will likely surpass its domestic gross of $144 million eventually but not by much.

That’s in sharp contrast to last summer’s “Shrek Forever After,� which grossed $501 million overseas, more than double its domestic take. And foreign moviegoers added $277.3 million to the $218 million in domestic receipts for March’s “How to Train Your Dragon.�

A total worldwide gross of about $300 million looks like the best-case scenario for “Megamind.� That would make it one of the three worst-performing computer-animated movies from DreamWorks in the last decade, along with the flops “Bee Movie� and “Flushed Away.�

The only standout market has been Russia. Results in the rest of Europe have been soft, affected in part by recent snowstorms.

It’s not clear why “Megamind,� distributed by Paramount Pictures, hasn’t proved more popular internationally. One person familiar with foreign distribution who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about “Megamind� noted that its main characters are humans and aliens and that many animated movies that perform well overseas feature animals. A DreamWorks spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment.

—Ben Fritz