Led by holdovers The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, Frozen, and Anchorman 2, the box office was up over 10% on the final weekend of the 2013 movie-going season. A couple of this weekend’s newcomers, notably Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street and Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty did fairly well, but were unable to crack the top four, while Universal’s expensive 3-D epic 47 Ronin starring Keanu Reeves, the Sylvester Stallone/Robert DeNiro boxing comedy Grudge Match, and the Justin Bieber documentary film Believe all bombed. Ending the year on a positive note was right in keeping with the general trend in 2013, which saw studios post at least a 1% gain over the box office record set in 2012. However, it should be noted that attendance at the movies was flat. The gain in the total take was the result of higher ticket prices.
Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug declined just 5.3% as it earned an estimated $29.85 million to bring its domestic total $190.3 million. Jackson’s second Hobbit film still trails the first film (An Unexpected Journey) after three weekends, but it gained a bit during Christmas week, narrowing the gap separating the two films from 15% after two weekends to 14% after three. Jackson’s second Hobbit feature has now earned $466.6 million worldwide, which is good enough for 14th place, but it still has a long way to go to match the more than $1 billion that An Unexpected Journey earned worldwide.
Disney’s Frozen continues to impress as it posted the second best sixth weekend performance all time thanks to an enormous 46.9% gain that yielded an impressive $28.8 million, which trails only Avatar’s amazing $34.9 million sixth weekend gross. With almost no competition for the family audience (Fox’s Walking With Dinosaurs turned out to be a lumbering non-factor), Frozen took full advantage of its lack of competition as it captured a huge percentage of its target audience during the traditional Christmas vacation period. Frozen has now worked its way past Star Trek Into Darkness and is the 12th highest-grossing film of 2013 with a worldwide total of $491.9 million.
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): December 27-29, 2013 | ||||||
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| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug | $29,850,000 | 3,928 | $7,599 | $190,304,000 | 3 |
| 2 | Frozen | $28,845,000 | 3,335 | $8,649 | $248,366,000 | 6 |
| 3 | Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues | $20,150,000 | 3,507 | $5,746 | $83,667,000 | 2 |
| 4 | American Hustle | $19,550,000 | 2,507 | $7,798 | $60,035,000 | 3 |
| 5 | The Wolf of Wall Street | $18,510,000 | 2,537 | $7,296 | $34,302,000 | 1 |
| 6 | Saving Mr. Banks | $14,021,000 | 2,110 | $6,645 | $37,844,000 | 3 |
| 7 | The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | $13,000,000 | 2,909 | $4,469 | $25,595,000 | 1 |
| 8 | The Hunger Games: Catching Fire | $10,200,000 | 2,315 | $4,406 | $391,124,000 | 6 |
| 9 | 47 Ronin | $9,869,000 | 2,689 | $3,670 | $20,571,000 | 1 |
| 10 | Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas | $7,400,000 | 1,788 | $4,139 | $43,719,000 | 3 |
Third place went to the Will Ferrell comedy Anchorman 2, which dropped just 24.7% as it earned an estimated $20.1 million, which drove its domestic total to $83.7 million. After just ten days Anchorman 2 is about to eclipse the $85.3 million final domestic total of the first Anchorman movie. Needless to say, Anchorman 2 is poised to post a major gain over the first film.
The fourth spot went to David O. Russell’s American Hustle, which posted a 2.3% increase in just its second weekend of wide release as it added an impressive $19.5 million to bring its domestic total to $60 million, edging out Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which landed in fifth with an estimated $18.5 million.
Scorsese’s sex-infused Wolf of Wall Street opened on Christmas Day and has earned a solid $34.3 million so far. Starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Scorsese’s Wall St. saga, which is based on the nefarious career of Jordan Belfort, is off to a solid start, but there could be some rough sailing ahead for the $100 million production, which, in spite of a solid 76% fresh rating from the critics according to review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, earned a disastrous "C" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences.
Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks, an inside Hollywood saga starring Tom Hanks as the legendary studio head Walt Disney, and chronicles his attempts to gain the rights to make a film of Mary Poppins, posted a major 50% gain as audiences have started to discover the film, which was initially a bit obscured in the plethora of films that have opened in the past month.
Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty didn’t exactly bomb, but the $90 million production, which has earned $25.6 million during its first five days, will need to develop strong "legs" if it is to make back its considerable cost.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire slipped to #8 in its sixth weekend as it earned $10.2 million to bring its domestic total to $391.1 million, second only to Iron Man 3’s $409 million total in 2013. It is possible that Catching Fire will eventually surpass IM3’s total, but the 2013 box office crown goes to Shane Black’s Marvel film since, if Catching Fire does manage to top IM3, it will happen sometime in 2014 (and there is virtually no chance that Catching Fire, which has earned $784.7 million worldwide (good enough for #4 in 2013), will ever match IM3’s $1.215 billion worldwide total.
Universal’s 3-D epic 47 Ronin, which cost over $200 million to produce, bowed miserably in ninth place with an estimated $9.8 million for the three-day weekend. Opening on Christmas Day, the Keanu Reeves-starring samurai epic, has earned a total of $20.5 million. Its poor weekend performance indicates that audiences aren’t finding the oft-postponed film any better than the critics, who gave the movie a pitiful 12% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Universal has known that it has had this bomb on its hands for a long time, and the studio already announced that it had taken write-downs on the film, and that the widely-anticipated bombing of the movie, according to a studio rep who stated that "our financial performance will not be negatively impacted this quarter by its theatrical performance."
Warner Bros. geriatric boxing comedy, Grudge Match, which stars boxing movie veterans Sly Stallone (Rocky) and Robert DeNiro (Raging Bull), fared even worse, debuting at #11 and earning just $7.3 million for the three-day weekend and $13.4 million for its first five days. But at least the movie, which is also known as Boxing With the Dinosaurs, only cost $40 million to make and should have some extra time to reach its older target audience.
But whatever you want to say about the shelf life of aging action movie stars, it is still far longer than that of a teen idol who wears out his welcome. Case in point Justin Bieber, who appears to be chafing at his fishbowl existence and alienating both fans and music industry execs alike with his current antics. The backlash appeared this week in the form of the giant collective yawn of disinterest that greeted the hagiographic Bieber biopic Believe, which debuted at #14 and posted the lowest per venue average of any of the handful of new films that opened this weekend.
Check back here next week to see if horror movies Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones and Open Grave can get 2014 started with a bang.
