Weekend Box Office: ‘Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ Dominates, ‘Daddy’s Home’ Does Well

There should be no surprise that in its second weekend, Star Wars: The Force Awakens dominated the weekend box office once again. What may surprise a lot of people is that it has already crossed the billion-dollar mark and is showing no signs of slowing down.

As reported by Collider, the second domestic weekend of The Force Awakens brought in a whopping $153.5 million with final numbers due out Monday. On Christmas Day alone, it grossed $49 million, which beat the previous record held by Sherlock Holmes, which was $24 million.

Along with hordes of other records already in place, The Force Awakens has notched the highest second weekend of all time and is the fastest film to ever cross $1 billion globally. Making those numbers even more impressive is that new Star Wars flick won’t even open in China until January 9, 2016.

For now, it is fully expected that Star Wars The Force Awakens is going to become the highest grossing film of all time to knock Avatar off its perch. Only time will tell if that ends up happening, but it sure seems like that is the way things are heading.

A few new movies did come out during Christmas week, five of them in fact. Four of them landed in the top 10 and believe it or not, they actually did really well. That is considering that it was Christmas and The Force Awakens was still tearing things up.

The new comedy Daddy’s Home may not have gotten great reviews from the critics, but fans certainly wanted to see it. The film starring Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg did well in its opening weekend as it pulled in $38.8 million at the domestic box office.

Jennifer Lawrence’s next film Joy opened in wide release and nabbed $17.5 million to land in the No. 3 spot.

Box Office Mojo reported that Quentin Tarentino’s The Hateful Eight brought in only $4.5 million and barely outside of the Top 10, but that’s not surprising. The film opened in a very limited release with a 70mm run in just 100 theaters so far.

For just 100 theaters, that’s an impressive haul and one that should bring about promise for when it goes wide.

Full weekend box office numbers for Christmas weekend are listed below, and final numbers will be out on Monday.

1. Star Wars: The Force Awakens – $153.5 million
2. Daddy’s Home – $38.8 million
3. Joy – $17.5 million
4. Sisters – $13.8 million
5. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip – $12.7 million
6. Concussion – $11 million
7. The Big Short – $10.2 million
8. Point Break – $10.2 million
9. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2 – $5.3 million
10. Creed – $4.6 million

The release of the remake of Point Break did bring in $10.2 million for its opening weekend, but many are already considering it a flop. As reviewed by A.V. Club, it has none of the charm and charisma of the original film and is more like a clip reel for extreme sports.

Missing are the big names like Keanu Reeves, Patrick Swayze, and Gary Busey who added so much to the original film and made it a cult classic. Now, it’s nothing more than the focus being on the action and not the great storyline that was there to recreate.

Still, remakes won’t stop being made and Hollywood will continue to churn them out.

It’s hard to think that there is anything that anything is going to knock Star Wars: The Force Awakens out of the top spot for quite some time. The weekend box office numbers will be dominated by the film for at least another month, and more records are going to fall.

[Image via LucasFilm]