With the Christmas weekend and the best time for movies, It was the medieval revenge, The Hobbit:The Desolation of Smaug which maintained its top spot for the third straight weekend. It earned an estimated $29.9 million, losing just 5 percent of last weekend’s business. With Frozen closing at an estimated $28.8 million.
The top new film to hit the screens was Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street, which debuted in fifth place with an estimated $18.5 million from Friday to Sunday and a total of $34.3 million since it opened on Wednesday, Christmas Day. Wolf’s was expected to take way the box office and could not execute perhaps because of very poor word-of-mouth or perhaps because a three-hour orgy of hookers and blow didn’t say “Christmas” to most viewers.
Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty opened with a lot of expectations, but unfortunately ended up in seventh place and earning an estimated $13.0 million ($25.6 million over the five-day weekend).
Canadians were not lucky this week, and in this case we’re talking about Keanu Reeves and Justin Bieber. Reeves’ action spectacle 47 Ronin, failed to impress US moviegoers. Costing as much as $200 million, It opened in ninth place with just an estimated $9.8 million over the weekend ($20.6 million over the five-day holiday), making it a huge flop .
Unfortunately Bieber’s new concert film, Believe, managed to open at Number 14, with just an estimated $2.0 million from Friday to Sunday ($4.3 million since Wednesday). Believe should creep into the black eventually, but it’s about a third of what experts predicted the movie would earn. Maybe Beiber’s erratic behavior in recent months has turned fans off, or maybe they were sitting at home and mourning the 19-year-old’s rumored retirement. It was not all also underperforming was Grudge Match. The Sylvester Stallone/Robert De Niro boxing comedy spotted at Number 11 with an estimated $7.3 million weekend ($13.4 million since it premiered on Christmas Day), about half of what was predicted. At this rate, the movie seems unlikely to stay in the ring long enough .
Three more films with Oscar ambitions were pushed on for competition, managing to open in a handful of theaters on the last week of the year in order to qualify for awards. Of these, August: Osage County grossed the highest (an estimated $179,500 on five screens, averaging $35,900 per screen), but the highest per-screen average of the week went to war drama Lone Survivor (an estimated $92,500 on two screens, averaging $46,250 per venue). The Invisible Woman, with Ralph Fiennes directing and starring as Charles Dickens, took an estimated $37,100 on three screens, averaging $12,367, still well above the average for any of the current wide-release movies.
Most already-playing Oscar hopefuls saw a huge boosts compared to last weekend’s business. American Hustle, Saving Mr. Banks, Philomena, Inside Llewyn Davis, Nebraska, Her, Gravity, 12 Years a Slave, and All Is Lost all earned Christmas gifts. The biggest of all went to Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, which expanded from four screens to 975 and earned an estimated $2.4 million as a result.