Weekend Box Office: Spectre and Peanuts Win the Week

After a long string of weekends during which no new movies were financially successful, two tried-and-true characters, James Bond and Charlie Brown, turned things around a bit. Both Spectre and The Peanuts Movie had successful debuts, changing the tone from a bleak, flop-infested October.

Spectre took in $73 million in ticket sales for the weekend. That's an impressive opening, but it's short of some of estimates that had the new Bond film earning $80 million in its opening weekend. It's also short of the opening numbers for Skyfall, the previous Bond film, which took in $88 million in its first weekend.

The Peanuts Movie turned in a strong second-place finish with a $45 million gross.

Last month's weakness is apparent when you look at the next six movies on the weekend's list of top grossers. All of them opened between four and seven weeks ago, and The Martian, which has held the top spot for weeks, still managed to hold on to a solid third place this week. Of the movies that opened last week, Bradley Cooper's Burnt fared best this week with a seventh-place finish and earnings of $3 million. Sandra Bullock's Our Brand Is Crisis came in eleventh place with earnings of $1.5 million.