Horror-Comedy “Krampus” Almost Knocks “Mockingjay” From Top Of Box Office

Los Angeles- The final installment of the “Hunger Games” dominated the box office in the United States and Canada for a third straight week, with Christmas horror flick “Krampus” scaring up the number two spot. Jennifer Lawrence and Josh Hutcherson star in the culminating chapter of the dystopian juggernaut. The one wrinkle in the box office order came from the horror comedy/satire Krampus, which leapt up from a projected No. 4 to No. 2 – perhaps dueto The Good Dinosaur slipping up more than anything else. It brought in $3.3 million from overseas over the weekend and opened at No. 1 in Austria, the birthplace of the Krampus legend.

Meanwhile, the Mother Theresa biopic, The Letters, made $802,000 from 886 theaters. Its domestic take is $227.1-M. Still, it just had the fifth highest grossing opening of any movie in 2015, according to Coming Soon.

The movie racked in $18.6 million, arriving to a total of $22.1 million in its three week of release. It’s unclear how wide Chi-Raq will ultimately play, since many theaters will likely refuse to carry the title since it will be offered relatively quickly on Amazon Prime (an official release date has not been set). Usually Pixar and Disney films have better holds, but this is a sign that audiences aren’t responding to the picture with the enthusiasm they showed for other efforts such as “Toy Story” and “Inside Out”.

Landing in seventh place, Blue Sky Studios’ The Peanuts Movie brought in an additional $3.5 million from 2,917 theaters for a new domestic total of $121.4 million. “In Chicago, we estimate a $15,000-plus per screen average on 22 screens”, Berney continued.

The Hollywood Reporter also listed a few limited film offerings which had their recent releases, including “Youth” and “Macbeth”. Spotlight and Brooklyn are two movies tipped to be potential Oscar contenders and they stayed put at eight and nine.

Sony’s Hotel Transylvania 2 checked in with an additional $2.6 million this weekend from 69 markets for a total of $274.1 million overseas and $441.3 million worldwide.