The residents of Middle Earth got a little good news this weekend as The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was able to maintain #1 position at the weekend box office over incoming Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues. After a somewhat disappointing $73.6 million opening last weekend, Smaug dropped 57% this weekend and ended the three-day run with $31.4 million compared to the $26.7 million brought in by the Anchorman boys, a film that felt as if it was the most marketed film in history.
If estimates hold, Anchorman 2 was unable to top its predecessor’s opening back in 2004. The original, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy brought in $28.4 million over nine years ago, adjusted for inflation that amounts to $36.8 million, which would seem to suggest the audience has actually dwindled for the fake anchorman. Of course, the film did open on Wednesday and has brought in over $40 million in those five days, but still, I can’t help but feel the blanket marketing campaign left audiences wondering what was left to see when it came to the actual movie. The “B” CinemaScore makes it appear as if audiences didn’t walk away too impressed.
Expanding into 2,507 theaters, David O. Russell‘s American Hustle scored $19.1 million making it the highest grossing weekend for any wide release for a Russell feature. The film also scored a “B+” CinemaScore, which I would say is pretty good for a feature that isn’t entirely general audience-friendly and one where the marketing may appear a little misleading…
Another Oscar contender in Saving Mr. Banks added several more theaters this weekend (2,095 to be exact) and managed to bring in $9.3 million, appealing largely to a 35+ and older demographic.
Hoping to capture the attention of the younger audience, Fox released Walking with Dinosaurs, but the response was rather tepid as it brought in only $7.3 million. The studio will obviously be hoping for some love over the holidays, but the “B” CinemaScore isn’t exactly stellar, especially for a kids film.
In other news, Spike Jonze‘s excellent Her made its way into six theaters and made $258,000 ($43,000 per) and cracking the top ten and scoring the largest opening for a Bollywood film in North America was the action thriller Doom: 3 with $3.3 million in only 236 theaters. How many of you had that one on your prediction charts?
Now, as much as it may seem the year is winding down, Christmas has more than a few cinematic goodies to share in the way of a mixture of limited and wide releases including 47 Ronin, August: Osage County, Grudge Match, Justin Bieber’s Believe, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, The Wolf of Wall Street, Lone Survivor and The Invisible Woman. Plan on seeing any of those?
