Weekend box office: Rogue One soars while Collateral Beauty sinks

Brad Sturdivant December 18th, 2016

Since we’ll be getting Star Wars movies every year for the foreseeable future, we should all accept that it’s not a question of whether or not a Star Wars film will be successful, but it’s more about how successful it’s going to be. As predicted, ROGUE ONE: A STAR WARS STORY (click the link to read our review) cleaned up at the weekend box office to the tune of more than $150 million. Yes, that’s about $100 million less than Force Awakens, but I think it’s the new measuring stick for the standalone Star Wars films. The film also has some great word of mouth going for it, which means it will probably stay on top well into the new year. The other big movie of the weekend was Will Smith’s COLLATERAL BEAUTY, which I’m sure has execs scrambling trying to figure out what went wrong. Bad timing, horrible trailers, critical thrashings will all be blamed, but the biggest reason COLLATERAL BEAUTY is Will Smith’s biggest career failure is because he’s still refusing to go back to being the charming Will Smith that we all know and love. No one likes grumpy Will Smith, but he doesn’t seem to understand that yet.

Next week should be an interesting one to keep an eye on. We have the animated SING, which just looks like an excuse to get a bunch of animated, talking animals to sing pop songs. We also get the Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt starring PASSENGERS. I have no idea how well PASSENGERS will do since it seems to be in a weird position. I think the sci-fi fans will still be going to Rogue One and the die-hard J-Law fans might not want to sit through a sci-fi “action” film (at least that’s how the trailers are selling it). Obviously, Rogue One will still be number one next week, but I’m leaning towards SING at number two. Note: the numbers below will be updated as they become final.

1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story $153.1m

2. Moana $12.5m

3. Office Christmas Party $7.8m

4. Collateral Beauty $7.2m

5. Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them $5.1m

6. Manchester By the Sea $4.1

7. La La Land $4m

8. Arrival $2.9m

9. Doctor Strange $2.2m

10. Nocturnal Animals $1.4m

(Deadline)