It won’t be #1 for the full weekend, but the story on Saturday was DJANGO UNCHAINED (Weinstein/Sony), which–according to preliminary numbers at Deadline, at least–had its second straight day of splendid growth (+17%) and is challenging THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY (Warners/MGM) for the day’s lead with $11.2M. It appears as though Django will pull even with, if not ahead of, LES MISERABLES (Universal) by New Year’s, and this kind of success won’t hurt it with the Oscar nominators (who are voting right now) either. The Hobbit, for its part, it looks to be up a comfortable 6% for the day, on its way to $240M by New Year’s.
As for Les Miserables, it’s once again up a negligible $300K to $9.7M, while almost everything around it is climbing more healthily; it appears to be a success but not a phenomenon. Its Oscar situation is the converse of Django‘s–considering its mixed reviews, it needed to become a boxoffice smash to move ahead in the awards race, and that’s not happening. Now it has to hope for a sweep in Guild prizes.
The family movies in the market seem to have reached a wall: PARENTAL GUIDANCE (20th) was just slightly up $100K from Friday to $5.1M, MONSTERS INC 3D (Disney/Pixar) was similarly up just $200K to $1.8M, and RISE OF THE GUARDIANS (DreamWorks Animation/Paramount) actually fell a bit to $1.6M.
The mid-level holdovers were nicely up for the day. JACK REACHER (Paramount) climbed 15% to $5.2M, THIS IS 40 (Universal) was up 10% to $4.5M, LINCOLN (Disney/DreamWorks/20th) rose 12% to $2.3M, and THE GUILT TRIP (Paramount) increased 20% to $2.5M.
Still in only 5 theatres, ZERO DARK THIRTY (Sony) is reportedly down about 20% from last weekend to a $65K per-theatre average, a fine hold but perhaps a bit softer than the studio would have hoped. (In comparison, The Hobbit will be down only around 17% this weekend in thousands of theatres.)
Typical patterns would put the Sunday boxoffice down about 15% from Saturday, with a further 20% decline on New Year’s Eve, and then a final burst of holiday moviegoing to increase about 20% on January 1.
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