Best Movies 2014: 'The Hobbit' Smashes 'Night at the Museum' in Box-Office Battle
Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies" has made Warner Bros. some $90.6 million in ticket sales since its release on Wednesday, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The final installment of the epic based on J.R.R. Tolkien's adventures beat out 20th Century Fox's "Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb," which features one of the last appearances of the late Robin Williams and took in $17.3 million, the newspaper added.
"We're all smiling at Warner Bros.," said Jeff Goldstein, the studio's executive vice president and general sales manager, said about the "Hobbit" success. "I think the marketing campaign that we had was really able to show the incredible action and generate interest in the film."
The movie's numbers are "right in line" with its franchise predecessors, Forbes noted: "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey," pulled in $84 million in its 2012 pre-Christmas debut, while "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" clinched $73 million in 2013.
Overall, "An Unexpected Journey" yielded the movie house $258.4 million in the United States and Canada and $700.8 million internationally, while "The Desolation of Smaug" delivered approximately $1 billion around the globe, the Los Angeles Times detailed.
The weekend's second and third-place finishers, "Tomb" and the musical comedy-drama "Annie," were "hoping to build good word-of-mouth ahead of schools letting out for the holiday," the Wall Street Journal judged.
"Night at the Museum," which along with Williams stars Ben Stiller as a security guard surrounded by historical figures, is looking at a bit of a challenge, the newspaper noted. It opened at $17.3 million, far below the previous installments of the franchise and only slightly above the "healthy" $16.3 million bottom line achieved by "Annie."
The museum comedy's first movie had been "a surprise mega-smash in 2006," Forbes recalled, opening over the Christmas weekend with $30 million and making 20th Century Fox a solid $250 million in its final domestic total.
Given that the franchise's second installment, which came out in 2009, was a box-office success, as well, it is surprising that the studio took this long to complete the trilogy, Forbes opined. The explanation may be with its star actors' busy scheduled, the magazine guessed, but may ultimately come to harm "Museum."
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