‘Hidden Figures’ flies high, passion projects sink
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 and starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer and Janelle Monáe, earned $20.5 million for the Martin Luther King Jr. Day holiday weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday.
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 religious epic Si
lence bombed in their widerelease debuts. Live by Night, adapted from Dennis Lehane’s novel, earned a mere $5.4 million in 2,471 theaters. Silence, from Shusaku Endo’s historical novel about 17th-century Jesuit priests in Japan, took in $1.9 million in 747 theaters.
The most costly flop may have been family film Monster Trucks. It earned $10.5 million but cost $125 million to make.
It was an especially crowded weekend. La La Land, an Oscar favorite, danced into second place with $14.5 million. Damien Chazelle’s musical, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone, received a considerable boost from last weekend’s Golden Globes, where it landed a record seven awards. It has made $74.1 million domestically in six weeks.
Animated Sing, about an animal singing competition, was third with $13.8 million to bring it to $233 million total. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story placed fourth and added an additional $13.75 million to its coffers. The film is now poised to cross $1 billion, with $980 million globally to date.
The surprise was supernatural thriller The Bye Bye Man. The low-budget horror flick finished fifth with $13.4 million.
Peter Berg ’s Boston Marathon bombing docudrama, Patriots
Day, took in a so-so $12 million in its first week of national release. But the film, starring Mark Wahlberg, earned an A-plus from audiences at CinemaScore, which suggests it could have staying power.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore, says audiences were inundated with films, some of which struggled to keep attention as they went nationwide. Hidden Figures, La La
Land, Patriots Day, Silence and Live by Night all premiered in December before expanding.
“It really is the tale of the holdovers. We’ve yet to ... have a breakout newcomer from 2017,” Dergarabedian says. “Aside from
Hidden Figures and La La Land, the others have had a tough time getting traction or getting noticed within this sea of movies.”
Final figures are out Tuesday.