‘Smaug’ smolders at weekend b.o.

The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug performed as expected this past Friday, Saturday and Sunday, even with weather conditions that were once again less than conducive to venturing outside. The Lord of the Rings prequel didn’t match the boffo opening of its predecessor, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey and that movie’s $84.6 million haul, though it was still the weekend’s top earner by a Middle-earth mile. Journey raked in $73.7 million domestically, which is more or less on target with last Friday’s predictions.  Although its gross also fell short of previous December blockbusters I Am Legend, which opened to $77.2 million, and Avatar ($77 million), Smaug is tracking very strong overseas. In fact, it’s out-performing the first Hobbit territory by territory, having reaped $131.2 from 49 markets.

In second place, Disney’s Frozen continues to skate along as an unqualified success for the Mouse House. The tale of two princesses dipped 32% to earn $22.2 million, upping its domestic gross to $164.4 overall.

Many had expected Tyler Perry’s A Madea Christmas to earn that No. 2 slot, which Frozen continues to keep warm. Unfortunately, this latest outing for Perry’s wisecracking granny was a disappointment, even more so when held against the director’s other films. Madea bowed to $16 million, Perry’s third-lowest opening yet. It's the lowest opening of any film to feature Madea. Yet even with such a soft bow and those poor reviews, Perry/Madea should still have a fairly merry $50 million Christmas on his hands.

Out of the Furnace will have most likely seen its way out of theatres by then. The weekend’s No. 4 earner took in just $2.3 million after free-falling 56% from last week. So far, the film has earned an anemic $9.5 million.

Luckily, the movie’s star, Christian Bale, has another lauded project to distract him. His other, more high-profile film, American Hustle, is just beginning a successful theatrical run. Having opened in six locations, Hustle scored a great $690,000 for a per-theatre average of $115,000. Fellow awards contender Saving Mr. Banks didn’t fare quite as well, though its $421,000 haul from 15 theatres is nothing to turn up a finicky nose at. It’ll likely play better once it opens wide this Friday.

Director Terrence Malick suddenly prolific, with three movies in queue

By Sarah Sluis

After waiting years for writer/director Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, I was a bit underwhelmed when it came out this May. What's wrong with a little narrative? Even so, Malick remains my favorite working director. No one else captures (or even cares about!) natural imagery the way he does. His films are like watching a "Planet Earth" that's subsumed to the narrative of the humans around the creatures and vistas.

Malick is famously private and refuses to give interviews to the press. Until The Tree of Life, he also had a perfect track record (at least in my book). Given how few films he's created, I suspect he's a perfectionist. I wonder if mixed opinions about his latest work somehow freed him from a fear of failure, because he now has three projects in the works.

The first has already filmed and supposedly will be edited by 2012 (though Malick is a notoriously slow editor, often using the cutting room to transform the work).Today, the Los Angeles Times was able to scrounge up details about the plot. Ben Affleck stars as a philanderer who goes to Paris, encounters a European woman (Olga Kurylenko) and brings her home, marrying her for visa reasons. With the romance fizzling, he takes up with a hometown girl (Rachel McAdams) with whom he has a history. Javier Bardem plays a priest Affleck's character consults about his raffish ways.

Malick's other two projects will shoot back-to-back in 2012. Lawless stars Ryan Gosling, Christian Bale, Cate Blanchett, Rooney Mara and Haley Bennett, who may be Malick's latest ingnue (he has cast unknowns such as Sissy Spacek and Jessica Chastain in the past). Knight of Cups, the second project, will also star Bale and Blanchett, though the movies reportedly do not relate to each other. That picture would also star Isabel Lucas, another young, relatively unknown actress.

None of the pictures has a U.S. distributor, though FilmNation has been serving as a sales rep and production company. Malick has reportedly already received offers for the first movie, though he has turned them down--an enviable position to be in. Let's hope his first movie squeezes into the end-of-year 2012 releases, but knowing Malick, such an optimistic timeline will be a longshot.