There was no doubt that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey would top US the box office in its first weekend of release. The only real question was how big it would be. The film has taken $84.7 million in its first three days, which is a record for a December weekend, beating out the opening of I Am Legend, which took $77.2 million back in 2007.
Despite this, some are still seeing The Hobbit as an underperformer, simply because many thought it should have cracked $100 million. However December is an unusual month as while most of the year you have to get what you can in the first few days and then hope the drop off is slow, the festive season tends to give movies longer legs than they’d usually have, and so The Hobbit is likely to continue to find audiences through the New Year, especially as it’s getting strong word of mouth.
As for whether the higher frame rate screenings have made a difference, Warner hasn’t released a breakdown, although 49% of tickets were sold across all the 3D playdates, and IMAX has reported a significantly higher per screen average for venues showing the movie at 48fps. Anecdotal evidence suggests there’s still confusion over the format, and that some people are being put off by bad notices given to HFR and are assuming all screenings are in that format, while others apparently don’t realise HFR is also in 3D.
Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of December 14th-16th.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
| 1 | The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey | $84.7 | $84.7 |
| 2 | Rise Of The Guardians | $7.4 | $71.3 |
| 3 | Lincoln | $7.2 | $107.9 |
| 4 | Skyfall | $7.0 | $272.2 |
| 5 | Life Of Pi | $5.4 | $69.5 |
| 6 | The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 | $5.1 | $276.8 |
| 7 | Wreck-It Ralph | $3.2 | $168.7 |
| 8 | Playing For Keeps | $3.2 | $10.8 |
| 9 | Red Dawn | $2.3 | $40.8 |
| 10 | Silver Linings Playbook | $2.0 | $16.9 |
The post Thanksgiving box office is traditionally dominated by holdovers and that’s certainly true this year, with The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 topping the US chart again, taking another $17 million to hit $255 million in America so far. It also hit a franchise record internationally over the weekend, taking $447 million outside the US, ahead of Breaking Dawn Part 1’s total of $430.9 million.
Throughout last week, the predictions of how well Skyfall would do on its US opening kept growing. It went from a possible $50 million debut, until the day before its opening many were thinking $60 million, perhaps even $70 million. By Friday the predictions had reached $80 million, but in the end even that was too conservative, as by Sunday it had hit $90 million.
Wreck-It Ralph certainly got a good start this weekend, with the highest opening ever for a non-Pixar Disney animated movie. The film took $49.1 million, just ahead of Tangled’s $48.8 million debut. It’s a great start, helped by the fact it appealed to both boys and girls, and with little to challenge it in the family demographic over the next few weeks, it should have strong legs.
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