Star Wars is just going to be a thing every Christmas as ubiquitous as Santa one supposes. Rogue One continued to dominate the box office though if you ask your editor here it's kind of... dull (*dodges tomatoes*) and people wouldn't care much about it if it wasn't "a Star Wars". At the very least it's a bummer that it turned out to be just an exact prequel to the original Star Wars -- it really ought to have had an Episode III½ header -- and not a stand-alone adventure with some fresh ideas about that galaxy far far away.
Box office charts with a few points of discussion after the jump. What did you see this weekend?
TOP BAKERS DOZEN
(Significant expansions this week are noted by an arrow)
01 Rogue One $64.3 (cum. $286.3) Review
02 Sing $35.2 (cum. $55.9) NEW
03 Passengers $14.8 (cum. $22.1) NEW
04 Why Him? $11 (cum. $11) NEW
05 Assassin's Creed $10.2 (cum. $17.7) NEW Review
06 Moana $7.4 (cum. $180.4) Review
🔺 07 Fences $6.6 (cum. $6.8) Capsule
🔺 08 La La Land $5.7 (cum. $13.6) Reviewish & How Rare Is It?
09 Office Christmas Party $ (cum. $)
10 Collateral Beauty $ (cum. $) Review
11 Manchester by the Sea $3 (cum. $19.7)
12 Fantastic Beasts $2.9 (cum. $214.2)
🔺 13 Jackie $1.2 (cum. $3.5)
In sad box office news it looks like Arrival (just outside this chart) isn't going to make it to $100 million at the US box office despite its initially staying power (it will cross $90 this week but just lost 3/4ths of its theaters). The box office this year is another reminder of why Hollywood resists making non-franchise originals: people prefer sequels to anything new. That's true whether the original titles are among the strongest films in the marketplace (Arrival) or the weakest (Passengers), they're just harder sells period for "brand' conditioned moviegoers. The question is how to get the moviegoing public back to the days when they use to not fear originals and treated sequels more like originals (i.e. if they heard it was good, they'd go, but otherwise not necessarily). What would it take?
In happier news, the highly enjoyable / mainstream appeal history drama Hidden Figures was the biggest new draw in limited release making $515K on 25 screens. On far fewer screeners but also debuting well for the festive weekend were Patriot's Day ($161K), Silence ($131K ... but the highest per screen average of any film this weekend), and Julieta ($91K). Live by Night ($33K) and A Monster Calls ($30K) had a harder time attracting moviegoers on only 4 screens each.
WHAT DID YOU SEE?