It’s still smooth sailing for ‘Moana’, which raked in another $18.8M, bringing the Disney animated flick’s cumulative total to $145M. At this rate, ‘Moana’ which is in its third week of release, is actually outpacing the performance of ‘Frozen’ from 2013. ‘Frozen’ ended its theatrical run with $400.7M. Can ‘Moana’ possibly sail past that figure? We shall see!
The rest of the Top Five was made up of hold-overs, with one exception, the all-star comedy ‘Office Christmas Party’. The adult-skewing raunchfest was directed by Josh Gordon and Will Speck (‘The Switch’, ‘Blades of Glory’) and boasts a cast that includes Jason Bateman, Jennifer Aniston, T.J. Miller, Olivia Munn and Kate McKinnon among many others. ‘Office Christmas Party’ took a keg stand to the extent of $17.5M, higher than the $14-15M it was predicted to make. That’s also significantly higher than last year’s holiday-themed ‘The Night Before’ starring Seth Rogen, which opened to the tune of $9.9M.
Unfortunately, it’s been a rough year for raunchy comedies and it seems both critics and audiences are reacting to this movie like warm beer. According to Rotten Tomatoes, critics give ‘Office Christmas Party’ a pretty terrible 43% and audiences are hardly more buzzed with only 53% toasting it.
Once again, ‘Arrival’ is defying expectation. The word-of-mouth sci fi hit is holding strong at the #4 spot, taking in an additional $5.6M, bringing its cume to $81.45M.
Elsewhere, ‘Fantastic Beasts’ and ‘Doctor Strange’ held strong at the #3 and #5 spots respectively. ‘Fantastic Beast’ is just days away from a $200M total.
- Moana (Disney) – $18.8M
- Office Christmas Party (Paramount/Dreamworks) – $17.5M
- Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Warner Brothers) – $10.8M
- Arrival (Paramount) – $5.6M
- Doctor Strange (Disney/Marvel) – $4.6M
Though not coming even close to the Top Ten, the buzzy musical ‘La La Land’ directed by Damien Chazelle, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, had the year’s highest per screen average at $171K. It took in a total of $855K playing on just five screens. It opens wider next weekend and should be playing everywhere by Christmas Weekend.
Next week, ‘Rogue One’ opens, so there’s that.
In what looks to be a heated December, Christmas Weekend welcomes three more highly-anticipated flicks, the Jennifer Lawrence/Chris Pratt sci-fi drama ‘Passengers’, animated family film ‘Sing,’ Oscar hopeful ‘Hidden Figures‘ and video game-based ‘Assassin’s Creed’. But with ‘Rogue One’ being only a week old, don’t expect any of them to take over the top spot.
Did you check out anything at the box office this weekend?
Source: Deadline
