After breaking the record for the best opening day in December with $37.5 million, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey was expected to bring in a final three-day tally of somewhere in the high $90 million range. Unfortunately, a 25% dip on Saturday lowered that total to $84.8 million, which was still enough to break I Am Legend‘s five-year record of $77 million.
It was also a number close enough to our Box-Office Oracle’s $88 million prediction to make Laremy happy this Sunday, now that he’s back on track and in the winner’s column, finally predicting the #1 film correctly after a few stumbles as of late.
As far as reader predictions go, Hobbit predictions ranged from $90-100+ million as confidence was certainly high. One commenter even suggested readers were “high” to even go any lower than $100 million, writing, “You guys are high if you think this opens to less than $100m.” Hmmm, so what’s that mean for the eventual result? I will say Corbin remained cool and collected, whether he was smoking weed or not I don’t know, but with a number of $82.3 million he offered up the closest prediction.
Looking down the rest of the list, you know all the players.
It’s nice to see Steven Spielberg‘s Lincoln cracked the $100 million mark as we won’t know how it’s going to do overseas until mid-January, after it’s surely received a heap of Oscar nominations. And I have to assume Silver Linings Playbook will be playing in a theater near you sooner rather than later as the Weinsteins kept it in only 371 theaters again this weekend and basically made the exact same amount as it did last weekend, only dropping 4%.
I truly hope the Weinstein’s get Silver Linings in more theaters before the Christmas rush of Les Miserables and Django Unchained. Perhaps expand it alongside Zero Dark Thirty during its Wednesday limited release in New York and L.A. People want to see it, give them a chance to.
Otherwise, between Wednesday and Friday next week a ton of movies are coming to theaters that may have the Weinsteins second-guessing a Silver Linings expansion. Along with Zero Dark, Sony Classics will send Michael Haneke‘s Amour into limited theaters and Paramount will send The Guilt Trip wide. Then, on Friday, we’ll see the release of the well-received Tom Cruise film Jack Reacher along with Cirque du Soleil: Worlds Away 3D and This is 40 and limited releases including Not Fade Away, On the Road and The Impossible.
