Weekend Box Office: Kung Fu Panda Takes Down Competition

Going into the weekend, there was little doubt that Kung Fu Panda 3, the latest installment in the highly successful animated franchise, would come out on top of the box-office competition. Less certain was how well the other two new wide releases, Marlon Wayans' Fifty Shades of Black and Chris Pine's The Finest Hours, would fare.

Kung Fu Panda 3 took the top spot with ease, raking in $41 million. That's an impressive number, and by far the biggest January opening for an animated movie, but it's off the pace set by the previous two installments in the franchise. Still, it was miles ahead of the second-place The Revenant, which took in $12.4 million, and third-place Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens, which took $10.8 million.

The Finest Hours took fourth place, but it was a hollow victory. Its weekend earnings of $10.3 million aren't much given that the film cost an estimated $80 million to produce. The film did get a respectable A- CinemaScore, though, so word-of-mouth might help it to have a little staying power.

Fifty Shades of Black had a production budget of only $5 million, so its $6.2 million weekend take isn't horrible. However, it barely made the top 10, edging out hold-over 13 Hours for the ninth-place spot.