Major Oscar contender “The Revenant”, a violent frontier revenge thriller starring Leonardo DiCaprio, came in second place at $37.5 million.
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“Star Wars: The Force Awakens”, the most successful film in history, has officially been dethroned this week as the top movie in America. Falling a lower-than-expected 38%, it has now grossed a staggering $129.2 million domestically. But the scale on which they are now planning for Star Wars’ expansion says a lot about Hollywood today: they weren’t buying a few Jedis and a wookiee.
Horror thriller The Forest slipped from fourth to seventh with $5.7 million, while The Big Short, despite its own Oscar attention, was down one place to eighth and $5.2 million. As often happens with comedy sequels, however, turnout for the second “Ride Along” was weaker than for the original, which took in $41.5 million on the same weekend in 2014. “Brooklyn” grossed $1.7 million, a 57 percent week-to-week increase, while “Spotlight” pulled in $1.6 million, a 67 percent increase. Add in overseas grosses and it shouldn’t have too much of a problem being a profit for Fox, even with the hefty $135 million budget. To survive for 16 weeks at No. 1, The Force Awakens would have faced stiff competition from the family-friendly Kung Fu Panda 3 (Jan. 29 release), the geek-friendly Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (March 25) and the just-announced, surprise Cloverfield “blood relative” 10 Cloverfield Lane (March 11).
Yep, there’s a new champ at the box office.
A crowded marketplace prevented Michael Bay’s 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi to have numbers that matched the likes of Lone Survivor and American Sniper in years past.
The $50 million production will do an estimated $19 million over the holiday. The Revenant should zip past the $100 million mark by next Friday. After opening on 4,134 screens across the nation, the film lost 312 over the weekend to bring its total count to 3,822.
The four-week-old Will Ferrell/Mark Wahlberg comedy ‘Daddy’s Home’ rounded out the Top 5.
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Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s Sisters finally slipped some, down four spots to #9 with $4.4 million (four-day total of $5.1 million). “The Hateful Eight”, $4.4 million. Whether the latest saga of Disney will break the record Furious 7 or Transformers is yet to be seen.
