The Battle of the Five Armies dropped 45.5% in its third weekend as it pushed its domestic total to $220.7 million and its worldwide total to more than $700 million. It trails the 3-weekend total of the first Hobbit film, An Unexpected Journey, by less than a million and looks to finish its domestic run right around the $300 million mark. A billion dollar worldwide total appears quite possible unless the Hobbit finale fades badly in the coming weeks.
The Disney musical Into the Woods continues to outperform expectations, dropping just 40% in its second frame as it earned an estimated $19 million and drove its domestic total to $91.2 million. The Angelina Jolie-directed World War II drama Unbroken also kept up its unexpectedly strong showing as it slipped just 39% as it added $18.4 million and brought its domestic cumulative to $87.8 million.
Fourth place went to the Hammer horror film sequel, The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death, which posted a strong $15.1 million debut. Every year the studios seem to open a horror film on the first weekend of the year, and The Woman in Black 2, in spite of the fact that it is set 40 years after the first Woman in Black film and does not star Daniel Radcliffe, still managed to attract a substantial audience of young horror movie fans (62% were under 25) to a film set in World War II about a group of children who are evacuated from bombed-out cities to a very scary old house in the countryside.
|
Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): January 2-4, 2015 |
||||||
|
Film |
Weekend Gross |
Screens |
Avg./ Screen |
Total Gross |
Wk# |
|
|
1 |
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies |
$21,910,000 |
3,875 |
$5,654 |
$220,767,000 |
3 |
|
2 |
Into the Woods |
$19,066,000 |
2,538 |
$7,512 |
$91,209,000 |
2 |
|
3 |
Unbroken |
$18,358,000 |
3,190 |
$5,755 |
$87,801,000 |
2 |
|
4 |
The Woman in Black 2: Angel of Death |
$15,145,000 |
2,602 |
$5,821 |
$15,145,000 |
1 |
|
5 |
Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb |
$14,450,000 |
3,802 |
$3,801 |
$89,726,000 |
3 |
|
6 |
Annie |
$11,400,000 |
3,166 |
$3,601 |
$72,600,000 |
3 |
|
7 |
The Imitation Game |
$8,111,000 |
754 |
$10,757 |
$30,808,000 |
6 |
|
8 |
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 |
$7,700,000 |
2,505 |
$3,074 |
$323,875,000 |
7 |
|
9 |
The Gambler |
$6,300,000 |
2,494 |
$2,526 |
$27,566,000 |
2 |
|
10 |
Big Hero 6 |
$4,816,000 |
1,913 |
$2,518 |
$211,268,000 |
9 |
Shawn Levy’s family-friendly comedy Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb continued its strong rebound from a less-than-stellar debut as it dropped just 28.5%, and Sony’s musical Annie slipped just 30.9% in spite of strong competition from Out of the Woods.
The Weinstein Company’s biopic of English codebreaker Alan Turing, The Imitation Game, actually gained 2.3% as it earned $8.1 million from just 754 theaters giving it the best per-venue average in the top 10. Poor Tim Burton, it appears that the Weinsteins’ considerable Oscar-nabbing savvy will be concentrated on this Benedict Cumberbatch-starring biopic, rather than on Burton’s Big Eyes, which ended up at #14 this week.
The Hunger Games: Mockingjay--Part 1 dropped just 23.5% as it added $7.7 million, driving its total to $323.9 million. Barring a surprising collapse this penultimate Hunger Games film will eventually surpass Guardians of the Galaxy to become the #1 film of 2014 in the North American market.
Disney’s animated hit Big Hero 6 rounded out the top ten as it fell just 3.8% and brought its domestic total to a stellar $211.3 million.
In limited release J.C. Chandor’s A Most Violent Year starring Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain posted solid numbers from four theaters in New York and L.A., while Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper was also stellar in its second weekend of limited release (it goes wide on January 16th).
Be sure to check back here next week as the 2015 film season begins in earnest as the quirky Thomas Pyncheon adaptation Inherent Vice and the civil rights drama Selma both go into wide release, and the Liam Neesom-starring thriller Taken 3 debuts.
--Tom Flinn
