‘Hidden Figures’ keeps orbit at top; Affleck, Scorsese flop

Film about 1960s space race at No. 1 for 2nd straight week.

NEW YORK — Labors of love, one from Martin Scorsese, the other from Ben Affleck, proved costly at a casualty-strewn weekend box office where the uplifting NASA drama “Hidden Figures” stayed on top for the second straight week.

“Hidden Figures,” about female African-American mathematicians in the 1960s space race, sold a leading $20.5 million in tickets in North American theaters over the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend, according to estimates Sunday. Fox anticipates the film, starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monae, will make $25.3 million when today is included, bringing its cumulative total to about $60 million.

The weekend was more remarkable for what didn’t work than what did. Both Affleck’s period gangster thriller “Live by Night” and Scorsese’s Christian epic “Silence” bombed in their wide-release debuts. Warner Bros.’ “Live by Night,” adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, earned a mere $5.4 million in 2,471 theaters. Paramount’s “Silence,” from Susaku Endo’s novel of 17th century Jesuit priests in Japan, took in $1.9 million in 747 theaters.

Both were high-profile projects that each filmmaker used their considerable sway to get made.

The most costly flop may have been Paramount’s family film “Monster Trucks.” It earned $10.5 million over the three-day weekend. Viacom took a $115 million write-down late last year on the movie, which cost $125 million to make. It was a rare admission, well before its release, that “Monster Trucks” would bomb.

Taraji P. Henson as Katherine Johnson in a scene from “Hidden Figures.”