Director Ridley Scott’s $140 million Biblical epic, Exodus: Gods and Kings, topped the weekend box office, dethroning three-time winner The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Pt. 1, but Scott’s $140 million reprise of The Ten Commandments with Batman/Christian Bale as Moses, earned only $24. 5 million, a little over half of the $43.7 million Darren Aronofsky’s Biblical epic Noah brought in when it debuted last March. The total box office was down a mammoth 44% from the same weekend last year when Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug debuted with $73.6 million.Things are not quite as bleak as they might appear at first glance for Exodus: Gods and Kings. It will do better overseas, where it opened in some territories last weekend and has so far earned $49.8 million, than it will do here, and the movie attracted an older audience (65% over 25), which could translate into solid “legs” over the coming holiday season (the theory being that older folks don’t rush out to see a film on the first weekend). The problem is that the debut was so low--Exodus couldn’t even match the total of Fox’s Son of God, which was just a re-edit of a TV series that opened with $25.6 million in February--and competition will heat up in the coming weeks. Fox has not released the movie’s opening weekend CinemaScore, but poor reviews (just 29% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) haven’t helped Exodus, which did receive a robust advertising campaign on select cable and network outlets. The movie’s opening weekend audience leaned male (54%) and was reasonably diverse with African-Americans making up 20% and Hispanics accounting for 18%.
After leading the box office for three weekends, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Pt. 1 dropped 40% as it earned $13.2 million and brought its North American total to $277.4 million. Continuing to show solid "legs" Mockingjay is now about 22% behind the pace of its predecessor Catching Fire, and it appears that if current trends continue, it will finish a very close second to Guardians of the Galaxy ($332.3 million) as 2014’s top film in the domestic market.
Things are not so rosy for Dreamworks’ Penguins of Madagascar, which experienced a 33% drop in its third frame. The small percentage drop is nice, but the film opened so poorly that it will have a hard time even sniffing the $100 million mark in the domestic market.
Chris Rock’s comedy Top Five opened in just 979 theaters (compared with 3503 for Exodus) and earned a solid $7.2 million for the writer/director, who is one of most interesting talents in American cinema. Top Five posted a per-theater average of $7,365, which was slightly better than that of Exodus ($6,994). The plan is for Top Five to gradually double its number of venues over the coming weeks to take advantage of the film’s great reviews (89% positive on Rotten Tomatoes).
In contrast to the dismal prospects of Dreamworks’ Penguins of Madagascar animated feature, Disney’s Big Hero Six earned $6.1 million in its sixth weekend driving its domestic total to $185.3 million. Big Hero Six should pass Wreck-It Ralph this week and end up well over the $200 million mark.
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): December 12-14, 2014 | ||||||
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| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | Exodus: Gods and Kings | $24,500,000 | 3,503 | $6,994 | $24,500,000 | 1 |
| 2 | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 | $13,200,000 | 3,731 | $3,538 | $277,398,000 | 4 |
| 3 | Penguins of Madagascar | $7,300,000 | 3,667 | $1,991 | $58,839,000 | 3 |
| 4 | Top Five | $7,210,000 | 979 | $7,365 | $7,210,000 | 1 |
| 5 | Big Hero 6 | $6,145,000 | 2,943 | $2,088 | $185,325,000 | 6 |
| 6 | Interstellar | $5,500,000 | 2,692 | $2,043 | $166,800,000 | 6 |
| 7 | Horrible Bosses 2 | $4,630,000 | 3,202 | $1,446 | $43,601,000 | 3 |
| 8 | Dumb and Dumber To | $2,757,000 | 2,842 | $970 | $82,117,000 | 5 |
| 9 | The Theory of Everything | $2,525,000 | 1,220 | $2,070 | $17,148,000 | 6 |
| 10 | Wild | $1,550,000 | 116 | $13,362 | $2,423,000 | 2 |
Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar debuted the same weekend as Big Hero Six and has been on a parallel trajectory. Dropping just 29.4%, Interstellar added $5.5 million and brought its North American cumulative to $166.8 million, a nice number, but just 27.7% of the film’s worldwide earnings of $601.2 million so far.
In news of the Oscar hopefuls, the Stephen Hawking biopic, The Theory of Everything came in at number nine, followed by Reese Witherspoon self-discovery epic Wild at #10, and Alejandro Inarritu’s Birdman, which passed the $20 million mark. Paul Thomas Anderson’s adaptation of Thomas Pyncheon’s Inherent Vice debuted in five theaters and earned $330,000. The convoluted stoner detective comedy goes wide in what looks like it is going to be a very lively and interesting January of 2015.
Meanwhile, be sure and check back here next week to see what happens when Peter Jackson’s final Hobbit film, The Battle of the Five Armies, which has been setting some impressive records in its early overseas debuts, opens on Tuesday, and then does battle with Night at the Museum 3 and Annie next weekend.
--Tom Flinn
