It was a slightly weaker weekend at the box office for two films on completely disparate sections of the American moviegoing populace. To begin, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second installment in the Hobbit franchise, was the obvious number 1 this weekend with $73.7 million, which is the fourth biggest opening for a December release, but behind the original film’s $84.6 million opening last year. Reviews said that the film was slightly better than the first, but the first wasn’t exactly a darling with critics or audiences, though still enormously successful with the built-in fanbase and the large amount of people eager to return to Middle-Earth. The film will likely have a high ultimate gross but it will be interesting to watch as it goes into the Christmas season’s notoriously crowded marketplace – the first made $303 million all told.
On the other end in third place was Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas, which opened to $16 million. This is the sixth film from Tyler Perry featuring Madea at the center, and the lowest opening of the six. It’s below last month’s Best Man Holiday‘s $30 million and the previous Madea film, Witness Protection‘s $25 million last June. However, the exit polls showed the audience was largely female and largely black, which remains typical for Perry films, and it’s likely that the film will have a similar holdover to the previous Madea outings, enduring through the Christmas season and ending with a $50-60 million gross.
In limited pre-wide-release Oscar run releases, we had David O. Russell’s American Hustle opening to $690,000 at six locations and Disney’s Saving Mr. Banks with $421,000 at 15 locations. That fares better for the former film than the latter, but it’s likely that both will be successes in the coming weeks.
Source: BoxOfficeMojo
