Rogue One was victorious for a third straight weekend at the box office. According to Variety, the Star Wars spinoff pulled in $50 million for the three-day period and a projected $64 million for the four-day holiday. That pushes the movie over the $400 million mark, and makes it the second-highest grossing domestic release of 2016 netting $425 million thus far. Currently, Finding Dory has the record for 2016 with a domestic gross of $486 million. However, with January being a slow month and Rogue One proving to be immensely popular, there’s a possibility that the new Star Wars movie could end up as 2016’s biggest movie.
Meanwhile, Illumination Entertainment had another good weekend as Sing, a film that seems designed to print money, made $41.4 million during its second weekend in theaters. The film is projected to earn $53.7 million for the four-day holiday weekend and has made $177.3 million stateside. It will be interesting to see how close Sing can get to Illumination’s other big hit of 2016, The Secret Life of Pets, which is currently the fourth-highest grossing film of the year with $368 million domestic.
Passengers continues to struggle at the box office. The film came in third, but only earned $16.1 million over the three-day weekend and $20.7 million over the four day. That brings its total to $61.4 million, but when you consider the $110 million budget plus the cost of advertising, the sci-fi romance is going to bank its hopes on the international audience turning out.
Assassin’s Creed also isn’t doing too hot. The $125 million video game adaptation took in $8 million for the weekend and a projected $10 million for the holiday. The film has only earned $41 million since opening on December 21st, so don’t expect this to be the start of a film franchise.
However, indies found a lot of success over the holiday weekend. Awards buzz is powering La La Land to big success at the box office. The film earned “$9.5 million over the weekend and is projected to make $12.3 million over the four-day holiday, which would bring its gross to an estimated $37 million,” which puts it past Hell or High Water as the highest-grossing limited release of 2016.
Hidden Figures also did well in limited release. The Oscar-hopeful earned $815,000 for the three days and $1.1 million for the four days from just 25 theaters. Other limited releases, Paterson and 20th Century Women, made $70,760 and $112,705, respectively. And Denzel Washington’s Fences made “$10.2 million over the three-day weekend and an estimated $13 million for the holiday. It has made $32.7 million since debuting three weeks ago in limited release.”
It wasn't all good for indies. Ben Affleck's Live by Night looks like a major flop. The film earned $32,000 from four locations for only a $7,995 per-screen average. With a disappointing total like that, the film's Oscar chances are pretty much shot.
