The Hobbit Tops The Post-Christmas US Box Office

It was a busy weekend for new releases at the US box office, but in the end none of them could beat out The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug, which topped the charts again with $29.8 million. Perhaps more impressive though was Frozen in second place. It’s $28.8 million is the second highest ever (behind Avatar) for a movie in its sixth week of release, and pushes the movie up to be Disney’s second highest grossing animated movie in the US, with only The Lion King beating it.

Of the five big new releases, The Wolf Of Wall Street did best with $18.5 million over the weekend and $34 million since it’s Christmas Day release. Although it only placed fifth on the chart, it’s still considered a good start for an R rated movie that runs nearly three hours.

Ben Stiller’s The Secret Life Of Walter Mitty grossed $13 million over the weekend and $23 million since Christmas. While about in line with expectations, it’s not great for a pretty expensive movie, especially one that had high Oscar hopes earlier this year.

The big disaster though was 47 Ronin, which cost $175 million to make, but only placed ninth with $9 million over the weekend and $20 million since Christmas. Once marketing costs are taken into account, some believe Universal will lose the entire $175 million it spent making the Keanu Reeves movie.

Outside the top 10, the Robert De Niro & Sylvester Stallone boxing movie had a passable $7.4 million opening, which isn’t bad at a packed box office, especially as it wasn’t a particularly expensive movie. Justin Bieber however had less to cheer about, as while his last concert movie, Never Say Never, opened to nearly $30 million, his new one, Believe, grossed just $4 million since it opened on Christmas Day. It certainly seems the Beliebers stayed home for this one, which shows just how fickle the concert movie business can be.

Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of December 27th-29th 2013.