"The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" beat out "Frozen" in a battle as tight as the finals series of The Miami Heat vs The San Antonio Spurs for the NBA Championship last year.
As reported by Todd Cunningham of The Wrap, The second movie in Peter Jackson's the "Hobbit" trilogy, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug" will take in at least $29.8 million over the weekend, and has rung up nearly $50 million since Christmas Day. Rolling up $190 million in the US and added another $98.3 million from international screenings this weekend, to up its worldwide total to $614 million since opening on December 13.
Disney Animation's 3D "Frozen" was just behind with $28.8 million for the weekend, an unbelievable 47 percent increase from last weekend and $44.2 million over the five days. "Frozen" is about to pass $250 million in the U.S. and is nearing $500 million worldwide.
"The Hobbit" is set to match the $1 billion earnings of 2012′s first film, "An Unexpected Journey," and Warner Bros. has succeeded in making it a holiday habit. Like the first two films, next year's "There and Back Again" will open in mid-December.
"The finale in a series almost always does the best of a series, so we're very much looking forward to next year," the studio's executive vice-president for distribution Jeff Goldstein told TheWrap. "We've still got a long way to go with this one though."
He noted that while "Smaug" started a little more slowly than the first film, it started to pick up steam over the holidays. That's particularly true at Imax theaters, which accounted for 17 percent of the grosses - up from 13 percent last weekend - from its market-high 3,928 theaters. The majority of those are 3D which, like the large-format screens, brings a ticket-price upcharge.
"Frozen", with an 89 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes and an "A+" Cinemascore, is benefiting from tremendous word of mouth. It also got a boost when its only potential competition for families over the holidays, "Walking With Dinosaurs," flopped last week.
The Will Ferrell comedy "Anchorman 2" was third and has pushed its US earnings total to $83.6 million. Unlike the 1994 original film, however, the sequel is scoring overseas and with $25.5 million, Ron Burgundy and his newsroom buddies have taken in $109 million worldwide in two weeks - easily eclipsing the $85.5 million earnings of the first film's entire run.
