Box Office: 'The Hobbit' Wins Christmas, 'The Interview' Earns $2.8M
The holiday box office is in, and it's a victory for The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies, which earned the No. 1 spot for the second consecutive week.
Peter Jackson's final Middle Earth epic took in $54.5 million for the four-day holiday weekend, bringing its domestic total to nearly $170 million, and its worldwide total to an impressive $573.6 million. This more or less ensures the film will eventually cross the $1 billion mark, assuming it can maintain its steady earnings rate into 2015.
The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies was able to fend off the challenge of two films that were surprisingly formidable at the box office in their own right: Angelina Jolie's World War II epic Unbroken, and the all-star musical extravaganza Into the Woods. Both movies greatly exceeded studio projections. Unbroken earned $47.3 million to earn one of the best openings of all-time for a World War II drama, while the $46.1 million opening for Into the Woods makes it the biggest debut ever for an adaptation of a Broadway musical, easily overtaking the $27.8 million opening of Mamma Mia! in 2008. Meryl Streep is the common denominator in both films, so take a hint for the next time you adapt a Broadway musical, Hollywood.
Of course, the real success story for this weekend was that the film industry's fears that attendance would be down due to North Korea's threats of violence proved unfounded. Revenue was actually up this year by eight percent, meaning that, if anything, the cyber scandal might have galvanized some viewers into going out to the theater this holiday season.
The Interview, which has been the cause of all this Sony hacking hullabaloo, opened at No. 16 due to its limited release. Although Sony eventually honored its intention to release the movie on Christmas Day, it was only released in 331 theaters, as Sony chose instead to release the film digitally through YouTube, Google Play and, now, iTunes. So the data on how well it has performed through video on-demand has yet to be released, since this is uncharted territory for a major studio release.
The Top 5 for the holiday was rounded out by a pair of family-targeted holdovers.
Night at the Museum: The Secret of the Tomb came in at No. 4 with $27.9 million in its second weekend, an astonishing 21 percent increase over its debut weekend. This brings its domestic total to a healthy $55.3 million so far. At No. 5 was another star-studded musical extravaganza, as Annie raked in $21.2 million to bring its domestic total to $45.8 million.
Check out the full Top 10 for the weekend box office below, and let us know what you saw, what you want to see, and what you think about this week's numbers overall in the comments:
Credit: New Line Cinema
TOP 10 AT THE BOX OFFICE FOR 12/28/2014
1. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies ($54.5 million)
2. Unbroken ($47.3 million)
3. Into the Woods ($46.1 million)
4. Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb ($27.9 million)
5. Annie ($21.2 million)
6. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 ($10 million)
7. The Gambler ($9.3 million)
8. The Imitation Game ($7.9 million)
9. Exodus: Gods and Kings ($6.8 million)
10. Wild ($5.4 million)