Weekend Box Office: Heart of the Sea Falls Behind Mockingjay
by EG
The box-office results for this weekend came in exactly according to script, with the lone new wide release underperforming and a resilient holdover winning the week. The most notable aspect of the weekend, though, was how poorly all of the movies in theaters did. Even for a weekend that was supposed to be slow, this one crept along with especially unimpressive ticket sales.
The week's winner was The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, which is in its fourth week of release but still managed to take in $11.3 million. Fellow holdovers The Good Dinosaur and Creed each took in over $10 million to secure third and fourth place, respectively. Behind them was last week's winner, comedy horror film Krampus, which took in $8 million.
Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea, the week's only big new movie, came in second with $11 million. That was almost enough for first place, but it was still a major disappointment for the costly film.
The cumulative earnings for the weekend were the worst for this weekend on the calendar since 1998, but that will all change next week, when Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens. That movie has already pre-sold more tickets than this weekend's top five movies combined.