For the third week in a row, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies took top honors at the weekend box office, netting $21.9 million. The final Hobbit film sits at $220.7 million total domestic gross, making it Peter Jackson’s sixth highest grossing film overall, narrowly edging out King Kong and its $218 million lifetime gross. Considering the film hasn’t begun to leave theaters yet and it has only the notoriously weak month of January to compete with, Battle of the Five Armies could likely catch up to The Desolation of Smaug ($258 million lifetime gross) and has an outside shot at catching An Unexpected Journey ($303 million lifetime gross), despite having the weakest opening weekend of all films in The Hobbit trilogy.
Into the Woods and Unbroken held down their number two and three spots from last week, grossing $19.1 million and $18.4 million respectively. Most every film had a down weekend at the box office over the New Year’s weekend, and these were no exception. Into the Woods dropped 38.6% week-over-week, and Unbroken made 40% less than last week. All of this despite both films opening in more theaters than the previous week.
The first debut to show up on box office chart is The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death at number four. The Ryan Kavanaugh-produced horror film brought in $15.1 million, blowing past expectations despite poor critical reviews.
Rounding out the top five was Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb which began leaving theaters – showing in 112 less locations than last weekend.
Fresh off of topping several big name film festivals, The Imitation Game saw a boost in revenue as well as a minor boost in theater presence. Now showing in 754 theaters nationwide, the Alan Turing biopic made $8.1 million over the weekend, or a 2.3% bump over last weekend. A small increase, but it was one of the few films to actually do better week-over-week, and the only film in the top 20 to not have a decline.
The big winner in the per-theater average department was once again American Sniper. Despite still only being shown in 4 theaters, the film managed to gross $640,000 for a $160,000 per-theater average. This puts the film’s total domestic gross over $2 million after only a week in this small selection of locations.
Foxcatcher came under some fire from Mark Schultz, the man whom the Oscar-contending film is based off of, but still pulled in $903,000 as it begins to exit theaters. In a series of inflammatory tweets, Schultz hurled insults at Foxcatcher director Bennett Miller and promised to ruin his career, among other threats. Presumably after a sit-down talk with a PR manager, Schultz toned down his remarks and later calmly explained that he is mostly upset with how his character, and relationships with other characters in the film, were portrayed.
Last year during this time it was once again Frozen topping the charts, but Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones managed to beat out The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug for the number two spot over its opening weekend. It was another slow weekend for the weekend box office, as the first weekend of January normally is, with a 28% overall drop in revenue week-over-week.
Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
