For the weekend of December 13-15, The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug was the big winner at the U.S. box office, pulling in an estimated $73.7 million. While the weekend take was impressive for Smaug, Box Office Mojo reports that the films earnings were still 13 percent lower than the first film in Peter Jackson’s latest Middle Earth trilogy, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.
According to Box Office Mojo:
When ‘An Unexpected Journey’ opened last year, it was benefiting from nine years of pent-up demand for a follow-up to ‘The Lord of the Rings’, which is one of the most widely loved franchises ever. Audiences weren’t as enamored with ‘An Unexpected Journey’, though, which made a subsequent drop for ‘Smaug’ seem inevitable. The fact that ‘Smaug’ was able to retain such a large percentage of the audience is a tribute to the loyalty of the fan base, and also to a strong marketing effort that made ‘Smaug’ look much more exciting than its predecessor.
Number two at this week’s box office was Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Frozen, which continues to deliver strong results, adding another estimated $22 million to its cumulative U.S. box office, which now sits at $164 million.
Rounding out the top five movies in the U.S. for the weekend were 3) Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas (est. $16 million), 4) The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (est. $13 million), and 5) Thor: The Dark World (est. $2.7 million).
Source: Box Office Mojo
Animation Fascination 