LOS ANGELES _ Moviegoers bid adieu to 2016 and welcomed in 2017 over the four-day holiday weekend, spending about $200 million to see just the 10 top-grossing films, a pack led once again by "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."
The continued forceful showing by Disney's "Rogue One" was expected to add $64.3 million to its total by the time the weekend drew to a close, bringing its domestic total to $439.7 million, according to figures from comScore.
That would make the film the second-highest-grossing of 2016 after only 18 days in theaters, behind another Disney enterprise, "Finding Dory," which took in $486 million during the year.
In second place was Universal's new animated musical comedy "Sing," with $56.4 million, to bring its two-week domestic box office total to $180 million.
The movie featuring the voices of Matthew McConaughey, Reese Witherspoon, Seth MacFarlane, Tori Kelly and others at the top of its cast fared modestly with critics, posting a 69 percent positive score at rottentomatoes.com and a 60 (out of 100) at metacritic.com aggregate movie review sites, but faring noticeably better with filmgoers, who awarded it an A rating, according to the audience polling site cinemascore.com.
Those runaway hits are contributing to what industry sources are projecting to be a record year at the box office. Movie executives are expecting total domestic box office revenue to hit $11.3 billion, up from $11.14 billion a year earlier.
That is tempered, however, by the expectation that the number of tickets sold remained essentially flat in 2016 compared to 2015, and that because of the increase in movie streaming, studios are continuing to see profits drop from home video sales.
Also in its second week of release, Sony Pictures' sci-fi thriller "Passengers" placed third at the box office, with an estimated $20.7 million.
Disney retained a second film in the Top 5, with "Moana" continuing to pull in moviegoers in significant numbers after six weeks, adding $14.3 million to elevate its domestic total to $213.4 million.
Rounding out the Top 5, Fox's comedy "Why Him?" starring Bryan Cranston and James Franco, posted an estimated four-day gross of $13 million, bumping its two-week take to $37.6 million.
One of the best-reviewed films of 2016, Paramount's screen adaptation of August Wilson's play "Fences," landed at No. 6, with $12.7 million, raising its domestic total to $32.4 million.
In seventh place, Lionsgate Films' "La La Land," the L.A.-based movie musical, took in an estimated $12.3 million while still in limited release on 750 screens. Its four-week domestic total has reached $37 million as director Damien Chazelle's latest is poised to open wide on Friday on more than 1,500 screens.
After two weeks of release, Fox's video game adaptation "Assassin's Creed" logged an additional $10.9 million, putting its domestic gross at $41.9 million.
At No. 9, the RSA Films release "Manchester by the Sea" added an estimated $5.5 million, pushing its domestic gross to just under $30 million in seven weeks.
Completing the Top 10, Warner Bros.' Harry Potter series spinoff "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them" brought in an estimated $5.4 million, also in its seventh week in theaters, which puts its domestic gross at $225.4 million.
Having opened on Christmas Day in just 25 theaters, Fox's "Hidden Figures," which focuses on three math-and-science-savvy African-American women who contributed significantly to the U.S. space program in the 1960s, is estimated to gross an additional $1.15 million through Monday, on its way to wide release on Friday in about 2,500 theaters.
The based-on-the-true-story drama stars Taraji P. Henson as math genius Katherine Johnson and Octavia Spencer and R&B-pop singer Janelle Monae as her two comrades in overcoming prejudices against women and African-Americans. It co-stars Kevin Costner as the NASA exec who aids in their efforts to break glass ceilings and has elicited an identical 92 percent positive rating from critics and audiences at Rotten Tomatoes.
