As the holiday season continues, Hollywood hopes to rake in as much dough as humanly possible. So far, as evident from the Christmas weekend receipts, two films are emerging victorious. Unsurprisingly, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story is leading the way with Illumination Entertainment’s latest animated offering Sing playing a robust bridesmaid in the second place position. Both films handily out-did the glut of last minute arrivals from Hollywood, including the pricey Chris Pratt-Jennifer Lawrence sci-fi pairing Passengers, the video game adaptation Assassin’s Creed and a host of awards contenders making nationwide berths.
Rogue One, the first spin-off title in Disney’s ambitious Star Wars reboot, earned an estimated $25 million on Christmas Day and exceeded that total with an estimated $32 million in Monday ticket sales. The Felicity Jones-headlined standalone epic has now earned a strong estimated take of $318 million and stands, by the end of the day, a fair chance of overtaking Finding Dory‘s haul of $486 million to claim the top spot for highest grossing title of 2016. Notably, Rogue One will not close to 2015 champ Star Wars: The Force Awakens with its record $936 million take, but that wasn’t really ever a question.
Sing, on the other hand, minted upwards of $14 million on Christmas Day and $19 million the day after for a six-day cum of $75 million thus far. Among the slate of holiday openers, Passengers ($30 million so far), Assassin’s Creed ($22 million to date), Why Him? ($15 million) all rate on the disappointing end of the spectrum; particularly Passengers which needed to open stronger to combat its hefty $100+ price tag.
Among more specialized awards bait titles, Fences expanded nicely with $11 million in the bank so far since heading into wide release on Christmas Day – good enough for fourth place and the musical La La Land continues to expand well with an estimated $17 million in box office receipts with the Ryan Gosling-Emma Stone romance only playing on 734 screens. Among limited openers, Hidden Figures appears to be clicking in early days, with $0.8 million so far in two days of release on 25 screens.
One holiday down and one more to go, let’s see where this week goes.
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