Although Christmas celebrations often involve family dinner, presents, and passing out from too much eggnog, Hollywood has plenty of offerings for those willing to venture out to the movie theaters.
This Christmas brings the opening day of several new films including “Into the Woods,” Angelina Jolie’s latest directorial effort “Unbroken,” and the film that allegedly started all of the Sony hacking scandal, “The Interview.” These new releases however are not expected to take the top spot from Peter Jackson’s last adventure in Middle Earth, “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.”
Despite the nature of scandal tending to drive the box office numbers of a film, Deadline recently spoke to an unnamed rival studio chief who doesn’t think the film will make much of an impression.
“‘The Interview’ is playing a bunch of little art house and sub-run theaters. If they were in the circuit first run houses it would be a different story,” said the source.
Whatever the case may be with “The Interview,” it is unlikely to take first place ahead of “The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.” Deadline expects Peter Jackson’s film to take in another $50 million over the four days starting with Christmas day.
Second place this weekend will likely go to Disney’s “Into the Woods.” Box Office Pro predicts that the film will take in $32 million this weekend. Given the star studded cast that includes Meryl Streep, and the positive reviews, it is unlikely that “Into the Woods” will be ousted by “The Interview.”
The third spot may however be a scramble between Angelina Jolie’s latest WWII biopic and the North Korea assassination plot comedy starring Seth Rogen and James Franco. Currently, “Unbroken” looks to take the third spot with $23 million, “The Interview” could exhaust all of its theaters that it has managed to get back and do slightly better than that.
As the year comes to a close and the last films of 2014 are released, it appears that sci-fi/fantasy epic tales still rule the box office.
