Peter Jackson’s final Hobbit film, The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies easily took the weekend box office with a three-day total of $56.2 million.  The Hobbit finale opened on Wednesday and has amassed a massive $90.6 million 5-day domestic total.  The other two big opening films, the pricy comedy Night at the Museum 3 and the musical remake Annie both had soft bows with Night at the Museum earning $17.3 million, just a million more than Annie.
 
It is difficult to compare the opening of The Battle of the Five Armies with the previous Hobbit films since unlike the finale, the first two Hobbit movies opened on Friday, but there are signs that The Battle of the Five Armies could do at least as well as the first Hobbit movie, An Unexpected Journey, which brought in $84 million over 3-days in 2012.  For one thing, it appears that The Battle of the Five Armies is attracting more families and younger viewers with 40% of the opening weekend crowd under 25 versus just 19% of the audience of the second Hobbit film, The Desolation of Smaug.  Viewers of The Battle of the Five Armies were as expected primarily male (60%), and they gave the film a solid "A-" CinemaScore, which should translate into solid "legs" at the box office. 
 
Second place went to Shawn Levy’s Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb, which earned just $17.3 million over its debut weekend, a franchise low, way behind the $30 million and $53 million totals of the first two movies in the series, which debuted in 2006 and 2009 respectively.  Since Night at the Museum 3 cost $127 million to make, Fox is certainly looking for the film to develop some “legs” over the Christmas holiday--and comedies have certainly been known to do so in the past, plus Night at the Museum 3 is the kind of effects-heavy comedy that has decent prospects overseas.  The film nabbed an OK "B+" CinemaScore, a grade on par with that achieved by the second film in the series, Battle of the Smithsonian
 
Sony’s Annie cost just $65 million to produce, so its $16.3 million bow is no tragedy, and this sort of kid-targeting musical typically do fairly well over the holiday season.  While the critics didn’t like this new version of Annie, giving it just a 29% positive rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, audiences gave it a solid "A-" CinemaScore, which means that it should hang around theaters for quite some time. 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): December 19-21, 2014

 

Film

Weekend Gross

Screens

Avg./

Screen

Total Gross

Wk#

1

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies

$56,220,000

3,875

$14,508

$90,627,000

1

2

Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb

$17,300,000

3,785

$4,571

$17,300,000

1

3

Annie

$16,300,000

3,116

$5,231

$16,300,000

1

4

Exodus: Gods and Kings

$8,065,000

3,503

$2,302

$38,902,000

2

5

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1

$7,750,000

3,174

$2,442

$289,227,000

5

6

Wild

$4,150,000

1,061

$3,911

$7,211,000

3

7

Top Five

$3,570,000

1,307

$2,731

$12,456,000

2

8

Big Hero 6

$3,563,000

2,407

$1,480

$190,441,000

7

9

Penguins of Madagascar

$3,525,000

2,717

$1,297

$64,172,000

4

10

P.K.

$3,461,000

272

$12,724

$3,461,000

1


Last week’s underwhelming winner Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings continued to race towards oblivion (in the domestic market at least) as it dropped 66.6% to just over $8 million.  With a ten-day total of just $38.9 million, Exodus appears to be headed for a final domestic total under $65 million.
 
At the other end of the success spectrum is The Hunger Games: Mockingjay-Part 1, which came in fifth in its fifth weekend in theaters as it added $7.75 million, bringing its domestic total to $289.2 million.  Right now it doesn’t appear that Mockingjay will catch Guardians of the Galaxy ($332 million) for the 2014 domestic crown, or end up with more than $1 billion worldwide and challenge Transformers: Age of Extinction as the top-grossing film of 2014.  The actual 2014 worldwide winner won’t be determined until Mockingjay completes its China run and The Battle of Five Armies ends its worldwide campaign in the first quarter of 2015.
 
Wild, the Pacific Crest Trail saga of personal exploration starring Reese Witherspoon, added 945 theaters and earned $4.1 million.  This Oscar hopeful could end up with solid numbers if the nominations and awards come as expected.
 
The biggest surprise of the weekend was the strong debut of PK, a 2014 Indian comedy-drama starring Aamir Khan, which opened in 272 theaters and, which, thanks to a $12,724 per-theater average, earned $3.4 million and finished at #10 during its debut week. 
 
Bes sure to check back here next week to see what happens when Angelina Jolie’s World War II drama Unbroken, the fantasy musical Into the Woods, and Tim Burton’s drama Big Eyes all join the box office derby.
 
--Tom Flinn