“The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies” didn’t have a ton of real competition at the box office. The two other films, “Annie” and “Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb,” were never going to be contenders with “The Hobbit.” The marketing for Hobbit changed from the original “There and Back Again” to “Battle of Five Armies” focusing more on large scale battles and the taglines for the ads became “One last time” which really created the draw for audiences to see one of Jackson’s Tolkien films on the big screen. The film actually opened on Wednesday and has already reached $89 million domestically.
“Annie” didn’t do too bad considering it was a musical remake opening against a giant franchise. Even though it was about tied with Ben Stiller’s latest “Night at the Museum” it could be said to be more successful considering that it isn’t a high budget franchise like Museum. When compared to the original “Night at the Museum” this third installation is a definite bomb, opening up at almost half over the same weekend and $33 million less than the second film.
“Exodus” also dropped quite a bit, 67%, and is a definite flop barely beating out “Mockingjay” in it’s 5th week.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | ||||||
| 1 | The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies | $54,724,334 | – | $89,131,544 | 1 | ||||||
| 2 | Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb | $17,100,520 | – | $17,100,520 | 1 | ||||||
| 3 | Annie (2014) | $15,861,939 | – | $15,861,939 | 1 | ||||||
| 4 | Exodus: Gods and Kings | $8,105,681 | -66.4% | $38,942,192 | 2 | ||||||
| 5 | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 | $7,879,421 | -37.9% | $289,356,110 | 5 | ||||||
Next week “Into the Woods” is the biggest name opener, now that Sony has stopped “The Interview.”
A quick note on budgets and dollar figures:
Films making back their budgets is a good sign, but that is just the money to film. It doesn’t include distribution and marketing. Marketing can cost as much as a film. That big Superbowl spot is spendy. So take that into account when judging a films success. Hitting $100 million isn’t the same as it once was.
All dollar amounts in the top 5 come from estimates based on ticket sales unless noted otherwise. Occasionally this article will be published when actual results come out, which is usually late Monday afternoon. For more about this and other ins and outs of movie tracking click here.