Star Wars held onto its box office crown for the fourth week in a row, but just barely, as Leonardo Dicaprio's The Revenant expanded wide and came in an unexpectedly strong second place, with 38 million to TFA's 41 million over the three days. This proves Dicaprio's box office might, as the movie was expected to be a hard sell, an artsy, violent revenge film directed by last year's Oscar winner Alejandro Inarritu, hardly known for crowdpleasers. In fact, The Revenant is now close to surpassing Birdman's entire domestic haul of 42 million- and all of that is credited to Dicaprio, who drew a near parity crowd of male and female viewers. Old school star power isn't dead after all.
Meanwhile, the only other new release this week was the dreadfully reviewed horror movie The Forest, which came in with 13 million and a "C" Cinemascore, so don't expect much from that. The Force Awakens has now made 812 million, the first movie in history to cross 800 million at the domestic box office, while opening in China to 53 million, the country's biggest weekend opening ever. The worldwide total is now at 1.73 billion, but probably won't reach Avatar's 2.7 billion record for biggest global gross ever. The holdovers were filled by Daddy's Home, which is on track to become Will Ferrell's third biggest hit after Elf and Talladega Nights, and Sisters, which is holding well to cross 73 million.
Top 5:
- Star Wars: The Force Awakens- 41.6 million
- The Revenant- 38 million
- Daddy's Home- 15 million
- The Forest- 13.1 million
- Sisters- 7.2 million
The Hateful Eight fell a steep 60 percent this week, despite adding over 400 more theaters. The movie has now made 41 million domestically, and looks like it won't be one of Tarantino's bigger hits. Next week Ride Along 2 is opening, which probably means Star Wars will go down, as Kevin Hart's new comedy will likely top the box office, and Michael Bay's Benghazi movie 13 Hours is set to fill the January war movie slot that seems to happen every year at this time. That's it for today and enjoy the Golden Globes tonight, everyone.
