The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies took the weekend box office for the second week in a row to the tune of $41.4 million, despite some Christmas debuts having decent showings.
Angelina Jolie’s directorial debut, Unbroken, brought in $31.7 million. Following the tale of Louis Zamperini, an Olympian and one time prison of war, the film has received mostly mixed reviews, with complaints that it feels monotonous and maybe a bit too heavy-handed with its inspirational message.
Following that was Into The Woods, a modern twist on the well-known fairy tail turned musical that brought in $31 million. The star-studded cast includes big names such as Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, Anna Kendrick, Chris Pine, and Johnny Depp. All told, the reviews are pretty favorable for the film, as it currently sits at 70% on Rotten Tomatoes.
Rounding out the top five were Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, bringing in $20,6, and Annie making $16.6 million.
One little movie you might have heard of called The Interview managed to bring in $1.8 million in the 331 theaters where it was shown. Amid threats of violence from unknown hackers, Sony at one point pulled the movie before allowing to be shown at a select number of theaters. Not only has the film made almost $2 million at the box office, it is also now the highest selling movie on Google Play/YouTube, as well as having been pirated almost one million times.
The Imitation Game continues to surge among great reviews and Oscar talk. Now showing in 747 theaters (up from a mere 34 last week), the Benedict Cumberbatch film made $7.9 for a fantastic 832% increase over last week. Even with all these additional theaters, The Imitation Game is still managing to make over $10,000 per-theater, which is an average that puts it right up there with The Hobbit and Unbroken, both of which brought in just over $10,000 per-theater themselves.
The big per-theater winner was undoubtedly Warner Bros. American Sniper. Showing in only 4 theaters for its limited release weekend, the film still managed to bring in $610,000, for an insane $152,500 per-theater average. Early reviews are positive, and anything with ‘American’ in the title is bound to do well enough at the box office, so this will be one to keep an eye on when it expands it theaters presence next weekend and beyond.
Year over year, this weekend in 2014 was about $10 million more profitable than in 2013. Last year was once again dominated by The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug and Disney’s Frozen. A big group of debuts, including the fantastic The Wolf of Wall Street made their first appearance, and mercifully helped people avoid watching Tyler Perry’s: A Madea Christmas.
[button type=”link” link=”http://www.boxofficemojo.com/weekend/chart/” size=”btn-sm” variation=”btn-danger” target=”blank”]Source: Box Office Mojo[/button]Last Updated on November 27, 2018.
