The writing was on the wall after Interstellar just barely edged out Big Hero 6 on Friday as the animated family feature ended up besting the new Christopher Nolan sci-fi, bringing in %56.2 million compared to Interstellar‘s $50 million opening.
Big Hero 6 scored an “A” CinemaScore while Nolan’s Interstellar mustered a “B+”, which really signifies the fact audiences liked Interstellar, but didn’t necessarily love it. As for Big Hero, I think you can expect it to stick around the top ten for quite some time. Both films carry a reported $165 million budget and should Interstellar manage to stay above $50 million once actuals come in, it will be only the fourth time in history that two films managed to debut above that number (via Variety).
Interstellar added another $80 million internationally for a worldwide opening weekend haul of $132.1 million while Big Hero 6 added only $23 million internationally so far, bringing its worldwide opening to $79.2 million, but it has a heavily staggered worldwide release schedule.
I also have to add, I still can’t figure out how Ouija is still hanging around. The pic dropped only 44% again this weekend, adding another $6 million to its overall haul as its cume is now up to $43.5 million. It carried a “C” CinemaScore and the rating over at IMDb is 4.5/10. RottenTomatoes has it at 8% and only 32% of the RT users say they liked it. So where is the word of mouth coming from that’s keeping this one alive?
There really isn’t too much else to talk about outside of the top two, though Focus did usher The Theory of Everything into five theaters in New York, Los Angles and Toronto where it managed to bring in $206,000. At one point it also looked like Birdman might be able to squawk its way into the top ten, but it ended up finishing just outside with $2.3 million.
It will be interesting to see how these top two holdover next weekend with Dumb and Dumber To being the weekend’s only new wide release with limited releases of Foxcatcher, Rosewater and The Homesman hitting theaters.
