'The Hobbit' beat all newcomers on Christmas weekend; 'The Interview' raked it in on VOD

A lot of movies came out on Christmas weekend, but none of them could go up against the almighty power of The Hobbit, the third installment of which held onto its number one spot for the second week. Still, the new releases didn't exactly do shabbily: With the top 12 movies earning $189.4 million, the last weekend of the year was also the highest-grossing.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies' weekend haul of $41.4 million brings its total domestic gross to $168.5 million; internationally it's earned $405 million, for a worldwide gross that's well over half a billion already. Second place went to Angelina Jolie's Unbroken, which earned $15.6 million on Christmas Day (Thursday) and $31.7 million over the three-day weekend. Next up is Disney musical Into the Woods ($31 million, $46.1 million including Christmas), which now has the third-highest opening weekend for a musical (behind Enchanted and... High School Musical 3: Senior Year? Did not see that coming.)

The Night at the Museum: Secret of the Tomb (weekend gross: $20.6 million; total gross: $55.3 million) and Annie (weekend gross $16.6 million; total gross $45.8 million) rounded out the top five; both movies added theaters and saw their box office hauls increase by 20.5 and 4.7 percent, respectively. New release The Gambler, despite playing on roughly as many screens as Into the Woods, limped to the number seven spot with a weak $9.3 million ($14.3 million, including Christmas) against a reported $25 million production budget. An R-rated crime drama was never going to do as well as a family-friendly musical, of course, but The Gambler doesn't even have the admiration of adults going for it; its Rotten Tomatoes rating is 48%, and moviegoers slapped it with a C+ CinemaScore.

The only remaining wide release was Tim Burton's Big Eyes, which pulled in a lackluster $2.9 million in 1,307 theatres. The Interview, meanwhile, earned $1.8 million on only 331 screens, and its day-and-date VOD release reportedly made Sony over $15 million from the bored/curious masses willing to shell out a $6 rental fee to see what all the fuss is about. Those are huge VOD numbers, though one wonders how much the film would have made theatrically were it not for the Sony hack.

Clint Eastwood's American Sniper made $610,000 ($850,000 including Christmas Day) in four theatres for a massive per-theatre average of $152,50, the 11th-highest of all time. Selma's $31,053 average ($590,000 on 19 screens, $912,000 including Christmas Day) doesn't come close, but it's still good--given the film's positive word of mouth, you can expect an impressive haul when it expands to wide release on January 9th. The Imitation Game expanded from 34 to 747 theatres and took in $7.9 million as a result, bringing its total gross to $14.6 million.

As for as Christmas' foreign offerings, Belgium's Two Days, One Night and Russia's Leviathan made $30,600 and $15,200, respectively, each on two screens.