Box office: Hidden Figures holds on to the top spot while six new films fail to find an audience

Box office: Hidden Figures holds on to the top spot while six new films fail to find an audience January 16, 2017

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A drama about three African-American women who broke racial barriers in the early 1960s held on to the top spot at the box office on the Martin Luther King Jr. Day weekend, while half a dozen new wide releases failed to find an audience.

Hidden Figures, which focuses on three black women who worked at NASA in its early days, topped the chart for a second straight week with an estimated $20.5 million between Friday and Sunday — a drop of only 10.3% since last week.

That raises the film’s North American total to $54.8 million since its limited release three weeks ago. The film does not appear to have been released overseas yet.

Meanwhile, all of the week’s new wide releases were flops to one degree or another.

The top new film this week was The Bye Bye Man, a horror film that landed in fifth place with $13.4 million. That’s somewhat weak for a horror film, but the film could still turn a profit given that it reportedly cost only $7.4 million to produce.

Right behind it was Patriots Day, a dramatization of the Boston Marathon bombing that earned only $12 million in its first week in wide release. It had the smallest opening of the three true-story movies that director Peter Berg has made with Mark Wahlberg (the others being Lone Survivor, which opened to $37.8 million in 2014, and Deepwater Horizon, which opened to $20.2 million last year).

That film was closely followed by the big-budget family film Monster Trucks, which landed in seventh place with $10.5 million (easily the lowest opening of any film directed by Chris Wedge, who had worked mainly in animation prior to this), and the Jamie Foxx thriller Sleepless, which landed in eighth place with $8.5 million (the lowest opening of any Jamie Foxx film since 2004’s Breakin’ All the Rules).

Two other films went into wide release this week and failed to crack the top ten.

Live by Night landed in 11th place with $5.4 million from 2,822 theatres — the worst opening of any film directed by Ben Affleck, whose previous lowest was the $5.5 million that 2007’s Gone Baby Gone opened to in 1,713 theatres.

And Martin Scorsese’s long-awaited adaptation of Shusaku Endo’s Silence landed in 16th place with $1.9 million — one of the worst openings for a Scorsese film in wide release since weekly box-office stats became a matter of public record.

One film passed a significant milestone this week.

Rogue One landed in fourth place in its fifth week with $13.8 million, thereby raising its domestic cume to $498.9 million. Rogue One has now passed Finding Dory to become the top-grossing film of 2016 in North America, and it will soon be only the seventh movie ever to gross over $500 million in North America.

Rogue One has earned another $481.1 million overseas and $980 million worldwide. It currently ranks 70th overseas and 28th worldwide on the all-time charts.

Meanwhile, in other box-office news…

La La Land earned $14.5 million and ranked second in its sixth week, thereby raising its domestic cume to $74.1 million. The film has earned another $54.8 million overseas, for a global total of $128.9 million.

Sing earned $13.8 million and ranked third in its fourth week, thereby raising its domestic cume to $233 million. The film has earned another $164.3 million overseas, for a global total of $397.3 million.

Underworld: Blood Wars earned $5.8 million and ranked ninth in its second week, thereby raising its domestic cume to $23.9 million. The film has earned another $46.8 million overseas, for a global total of $70.7 million.

And Passengers earned $5.6 million and ranked tenth in its fourth week, thereby raising its domestic cume to $90 million. The film has earned another $147.1 million overseas, for a global total of $237.1 million.

Next week brings us Split, xXx: The Return of Xander Cage, The Resurrection of Gavin Stone and the wide releases of The Founder and 20th Century Women.


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