Powered by impressive showings throughout "flyover" country, Peter Berg’s Lone Survivor out-performed expectations as it posted the second best 3-day January debut ever with an estimated $38.9 million, while fellow newcomer The Legend of Hercules delivered a flaccid box office performance as it landed at #4 with $8.6 million.   Overall the total of the top 12 films was just 2.2% ahead of the same weekend last year when Zero Dark Thirty, the film based on the killing of Osama Bin Laden, topped the charts with $24.4 million.
 
Berg, whose previous directorial effort Battleship was a near total bomb, made a potent comeback with the patriotic Lone Survivor, which is based on the memoir of a Navy Seal, who survived an ill-fated effort to take out a Taliban chieftain in Afghanistan.  Few films about America’s 21st Century wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have proved popular, but Lone Survivor with its mixture of meticulously recreated gun battles in mountainous terrain and its themes of self-sacrifice and patriotism gives every indication of becoming a major hit.  Opening weekend audiences gave the movie, which more than doubled studio expectations at the box office, an "A+" CinemaScore, which typically translates into a long stay at the box office.  Universal did an excellent job of promoting Lone Survivor with sharply edited spots shown during key mid-winter TV sports events and longer featurettes playing along with conventional previews in many theaters.
 
Disney’s Frozen, the longtime holdover that topped the charts last week, slipped to #2 as it earned nearly $15 million and brought its domestic cumulative to $317 million.  Overseas it is doing even better ($394.6 million) and has now surpassed $700 million.
 
Third place went to Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which declined just 32% in its third week as it added an estimated $9 million and brought its domestic total to $78.6 million. 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): January 10-12, 2014

 

Film

Weekend Gross

Screens

Avg./

Screen

Total Gross

Wk#

1

Lone Survivor

$38,511,000

2,875

$13,395

$38,892,000

3

2

Frozen

$15,070,000

3,239

$4,653

$317,661,000

8

3

The Wolf of Wall Street

$9,000,000

2,521

$3,570

$78,587,000

3

4

The Legend of Hercules

$8,600,000

2,104

$4,087

$8,600,000

1

5

American Hustle

$8,600,000

2,629

$3,271

$101,563,000

5

6

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

$8,015,000

3,075

$2,607

$242,219,000

5

7

August: Osage County

$7,315,000

905

$8,083

$7,860,000

3

8

Saving Mr. Banks

$6,578,000

2,671

$2,463

$68,949,000

5

9

Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones

$6,300,000

2,883

$2,185

$28,471,000

2

10

Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues

$6,100,000

3,012

$2,025

$118,518,000

4


Tied for fourth place with an estimated $8.6 million (final totals are due tomorrow) are David O. Russell’s Abscam comedy/drama American Hustle, which has now crossed the $100 million mark domestically, and Renny Harlin’s The Legend of Hercules.  Harlin’s film is the first of two Hercules films headed to the cineplexes in 2014.  Brett Ratner is adapting the Radical comic book/graphic novel Hercules: The Thracian Wars in a big budget epic due in July that stars The Rock. 
 
With a lousy "B-" CinemaScore and a critics’ rating of just 2% positive on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, The Legend of Hercules, which stars Olympian Kellan Lutz and cost $70 million to make, appears dead in the water.  Those in charge of this year’s second Hercules film can only hope that The Legend of Hercules hasn’t “poisoned the well.”
 
Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, currently in its fifth weekend of release, slipped to sixth place as it earned an estimated $8 million and brought its domestic cumulative to $242.2 million.  Worldwide Jackson’s second Hobbit film has now crossed the $800 million mark, but even though it is yet to open in China and Japan where the first Hobbit movie brought it $70 million, it appears increasingly unlikely that The Desolation of Smaug will crack the $1 billion mark like its predecessor did.
 
The scenery-chewing dysfunctional family shriek-fest August Osage County expanded to 900 theaters and took the #7 spot thanks to an excellent $8,083 per-venue average.  Osage County out-performed Spike Jonze’s Her, which expanded from 47 theaters to 1,729, but could only manage a $3,129 average and a total of $5.4 million, which was only good enough to land at #11. 
 
Last week’s #2 movie, the "found footage" horror film Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, slipped 65.7% as it earned $6.3 million and fell to number 9.
 
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire fell from the top ten for the first time in 8 weekends as it earned $4.6 million, but it did earn enough this week to bring its domestic cumulative to $413.9 million making it the highest-grossing film released in 2013.
 
Check back here next week to see how a quartet of new films including the high-profile Tom Clancy-based thrilled Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit starring Chris Pine, the satanic spawn horror film Devil’s Due, the animated Tex Avery ("Screwy Squirrel" becomes "Surly Squirrel") rip-off The Nut Job, or the comedy/drama Ride Along fare in competition with Sole Survivor.