APEX Hollywood Shortlist: The Interview is the Gift That Keeps on Giving
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Although most of the studios are closed for the holidays and won’t release their final box office figures until next week, by all estimations it was another banner week in Middle-earth with Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies taking in an estimated $40.9M in its second weekend in theaters.
Angelina Jolie’s WWII biopic of Olympian Louis Zamperini, Unbroken (Universal) and Disney’s big-screen adaptation of Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine’s Tony award-winning musical Into the Woods spent most of the five-day time frame sparring for second place, at press time Woods was leading with an estimated $46.1M to Unbroken’s estimated haul of $46M.
Opening with an estimated $2.8M on 331 screens nationwide, Sony’s much-talked-about Seth Rogen-James Franco comedy The Interview is making history in more ways than one. Sony announced over the weekend that The Interview has already become the biggest online release in the studio’s history having been downloaded an estimated 2 million times since Christmas Day. Costing $5.99 to rent and $14.99 to buy on Google Play, YouTube Movies, X-Box Video and a host of other platforms online, The Interview had taken in roughly $15M by Saturday. Combined with the estimated box office take, The Interview is easily on track to pull in more than $18M over the five-day frame.
Also making news over the weekend was Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part I, which crossed the $300M mark over the weekend to become the second highest grossing film of the year behind Disney/Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy. And another pair of serious award-season contenders opened big with impressive results: Studio estimates predict the Mark Wahlberg drama, The Gambler (Paramount) will cash out next week with roughly $14.1M while Tim Burton’s Big Eyes (The Weinstein Company) is expected to take in an eyebrow raising $4.4M on 1,307 screens. So, any way you look at it, Santa delivered at the box office this year.