Hidden Figures stays #1

For the weekend of January 13-15, 2017, the holdovers hung on despite a slew of new competition, and some of these titles would probably like the Academy Award nominations to be announced sooner than January 24th.

Hidden Figures easily held on to the #1 spot. Sometimes marketing is about timing, and by expanding a week earlier, Figures was poised to stay strong for the MLK weekend. La La Land added a few screens and won the #2 spot with the best per-screen average of the top 10.

Sing actually passed Moana in domestic gross. Never would have guessed that three months ago.

Rogue One is finally ready to drop, but it'll hit the $500 million domestic mark tomorrow, and it'll cross the $1 billion mark worldwide sometime this week.

So of the seven titles new or opening wide, the most successful one was the PG-13 thriller The Bye Bye Man. STX had delayed this from November and it looks like that was a good call. It opened a little bit better than The Forest did this time last year.

Monster Trucks had a $100 million production budget, so Paramount's known for six months they were going to lose a lot of money on it.

Sleepless is the lowest opener for a Jamie Foxx movie since 2004's Breakin' All the Rules. It's also his worst-reviewed movie since 2005's Stealth.

The Oscar-qualifying expanders all have to be disappointed. A few weeks ago, it looked like Patriots Day would be a $20 million opener, but the buzz around other movies drowned it out. Live By Night was supposed to be Ben Affleck's next award-worthy movie, but the director of Gone Baby Gone, Argo, and The Town has his first critical and commercial flop. (As a director, I said!)

Martin Scorsese's Silence is another movie that really needed award-buzz to help it out, and while it probably will get some peripheral nominations, it won't be enough to buoy it. Moonlight re-expanded to squeeze out another $1 million, but I see it leaving towns soon and then maybe doing one more burst after the Oscars.

Next week I see being a race between Split and the third xXx movie for #1.

Opens January 20
XXX: THE RETURN OF XANDER CAGE with Vin Diesel, Samuel L. Jackson and Donnie Yen.
SPLIT with James McAvoy, Anya Taylor-Joy, Haley Lu Richardson and Betty Buckley.
THE FOUNDER with Michael Keaton, Laura Dern, Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch.
THE RESURRECTION OF GAVIN STONE with Brett Dalton and Shawn Michaels.