APEX Hollywood Shortlist: Liam Neeson’s Back With a Vengeance in Taken 3’s Boffo Weekend B.O.
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- Taken, Twentieth Century Fox
When Liam Neeson’s first Taken film opened on Super Bowl weekend in January of 2009 with $24.7M, it quickly became clear that the “particular set of skills” Neeson’s character so memorably displays in the film also applied to his power at the box office as well. Aside from scoring what was then the second highest Super Bowl weekend debut in history, Taken has spawned two sequels and launched Neeson’s reputation as the rare actor that manages to pack theatres in the box office “dead zone” of early January. In January of 2012, Neeson’s action-packed The Grey (Open Road Films) opened at number one with $19.6M. His voice-only performance in last January’s The Nut Job (Open Road Films) opened in third place with $19.4M. And this past weekend, Neeson did it again with Taken 3.
The third outing in co-creators Luc Besson and Robert Mark Kamen’s massively successful Taken trilogy, Taken 3 knocked the The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies out of first place over the weekend to become the third-highest grossing January debut in history with $39.2M.
- Selma, Paramount Pictures
Marching up the charts to second place from 24th was Paramount’s newly-minted Golden Globe winner (for Best Original Song: “Glory”) Selma, which took in $11.3M in it’s first wide week of release. Also making news at the box office were two holiday holdovers, Disney’s Into the Woods and Universal’s Unbroken, which crossed the $100M mark to bring their three week takes to $105M and $101M, respectively.
And with Fox’s award season smash, Gone Girl, joining the previously released Golden Globe winners Boyhood and The Grand Budapest Hotel on DVD, Blu-Ray and streaming today, it looks to be a busy week on the home market as well.
- Leviathan, Sony Pictures
Also expected to experience a noticeable bump after Sunday’s Globes telecast is Sony Pictures Classics’ Best Foreign Language Film winner Leviathan (Russia), which is holding steady with $120.8K and a per screen average of $6,800K in four theatres in its third week of limited release.