It was another weekend of new arrivals stumbling in the face of solid holdovers at the American box office as Spectre handily retained its first place spot with $35.4 million.
The latest Bond film has now earned more than $130 million in the States and has a global total of $349.9 million after a couple of weeks on release. So while it has some way to go to reach that reported $650 million “break even” point, it’s doing well so far. The Peanuts Movie clung to second place, adding a healthy $24.2 million this weekend, bringing its US total to $82.4 million. It’ll be interesting to see how well it does around the world – the film reaches our cinemas on December 21.
Love The Coopers (known as Christmas With The Coopers over here) was shown little love by either critics – who took the title as carte blanche to unleash a torrent of “more like hate!” puns – or audiences, though it proved to be the best performer of a struggling group of newbies with $8.4 million in third. It displaced The Martian down to fourth, though Ridley Scott’s sci-fi drama (or comedy, if you count its Golden Globe categorization), still made $6.7 million, and crossed the $200 million mark in the US alone.
That meant a movie that has been out in the charts for seven weeks earned more than another story of survival and rescue attempts, this one based off a true story. Chilean mining disaster drama The 33 arrived fifth with $5.8 million. Goosebumps was down to sixth, earning $4.6 million, while Steven Spielberg’s Bridge Of Spies fell to seventh and $4.2 million. Indian romantic drama Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, which loosely adapts The Prince And The Pauper, scored a solid win for itself, making a rare Bollywood entry into the US top 10 at eighth, taking home $2.4 million from just 286 screens. Compare that to, for example, By The Sea, Angelina Jolie Pitt’s latest directorial project, pairing her on screen with real-life hubby Brad Pitt, which launched in a strictly limited release of 10 screens, but could still only rustle up 31st place in the charts with $95,440. That works out to $9,544 per screen. Can it expand and find a bigger success? We’ll see, but when something like *Steve Jobs *struggles, we wonder.
Hotel Transylvania 2 slipped to ninth and $2.3 million, while The Last Witch Hunter fell to 10th place with $1.5 million. Having earned $84 million worldwide from a $90 million budget (not counting prints and advertising), the hopes for a sequel to this one must be fading fast. Still, it performed better than wannabe-inspirational American Football drama My All American, which arrived in 12th place with $1.392 million. To put that into context, the film launched on 1,565 screens, while Catholic church abuse scandal investigation drama Spotlight earned $1.398 million from 61 screens.
To see Bond use a lethal gadget on the competition in the full listings, head to Box Office Mojo.