Exodus tops the chart, but disappoints

As was predicted in the other thread, Ridley Scott's semi-biblical epic Exodus: Gods & Kings took the top spot at the box office unseating three weeks champ Katniss Everdeen 'Mockingjay' with the good, but unimpressive $24.5 million. That is not enough front load cash for the $140 million budget film (most films get the bigger slice of their total grosses during their debut weekend). The film will have to perform incredibly well in the foreign market (quite possible) to show some profit. 'Exodus' main core audience was 57% male, Latino & African Americans and religious moviegoers who apparently were not aware of the reviews. Word of mouth will make or break the film's domestic staying power for the rest of the month of December. Exodus opening numbers were inferior to other recent biblical films like Noah $43.7 million or Son of God $25.6 million.

In the second spot The Hunger Games: Mockingjay added $13.2 million for a domestic total of $277.3 million. The chances of this film catching up to Guardians of the Galaxy $332 million domestic gross seems unlikely at this point. Even with a worldwide gross of $661million the latest entry of the scifi franchise is railing way behind last year's 'Catching Fire' and will be the first Hunger Games movie that doesn't reach $1 billion gross worldwide.

Penguins of Madagascar took the third spot with $7.3 million for a three weeks total of $58 million, or the same number DreamWorks was expecting for its opening weekend. With a $131 budget and less than spectacular foreign grosses this could be viewed as a miscalculated flop.

Chris Rock directorial debut Top Five debuted among the top five in the 4th spot with $7.2 million. The distributor hasn't released the movie budget so I don't know if that debut was a solid one or a weak one.

Big Hero 6 descended to the fifth position with $6.1 million. The Disney Animation film has now a domestic total of $185.3 million. Following it in the sixth spot is Interstellar with $5.5 million and $166 million domestic gross. But don't let those numbers fool you: while the Disney animated film looks like the winner at the domestic numbers, that film has experienced a less than stellar performance at the foreign market while the Nolan scifi epic is doing Marvel-like numbers in that same circuit with a worldwide total (and counting) of $621.8 million. The film has been immensely popular in China ($122 million) and South Korea ($71 million) and it has not opened yet in Japan where is expected to do very well too.

But the biggest box office news is the Hobbit last film overseas opening:The Hobbit: The Battle of The Five Armies grossed a whooping $117.6 million in 3 days which is not as big as the last film, but still could end up becoming the most successful film of 2014.