The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies took the Christmas No 1 spot at the US box office with a $54.5m (£35.1m) haul on its second weekend, while Angelina Jolie war drama Unbroken and fantasy musical Into the Woods both scored surprise hit openings in excess of $40m.
Peter Jackson’s final trip to Middle-earth has earned $170m in the US after two weeks on release, and is poised to cross the $600m mark worldwide. It currently has $573m and looks on course to take in excess of $1bn by the end of its run.
Jolie’s Unbroken, the story of second-world-war pilot Lou Zamperini’s fight for survival in Japanese prisoner-of-war camps, scored a $47.3m debut in second place. The spectacular opening will bring some solace to the Oscar-winning actor, whose second film as director has received some lukewarm reviews and conspicuously failed to register in the Golden Globe nominations earlier this month.
Into the Woods, Rob Marshall’s star-studded adaptation of the hit Stephen Sondheim musical, opened with an impressive $46.1m in third position. Starring James Corden, Emily Blunt, Johnny Depp, Anna Kendrick, Meryl Streep and Chris Pine as an assortment of fairytale figures, the film scored the second biggest ever bow for a Broadway musical adaptation after Mamma Mia!.
The top five was rounded out by Night of the Museum: Secret of the Tomb with another $27.9m for a two-week total of $55.3m in fourth, and musical remake Annie, with $21.2m in its second week for a total of $45.8m.
Meanwhile, the low-budget Mark Wahlberg crime drama The Gambler opened in seventh place with $14m. Rupert Wyatt’s film is a remake of the 1974 James Caan classic about a professor with a debilitating weakness for high-stakes gambling.
Oscar-tipped biopic The Imitation Game, starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the second-world-war codebreaker Alan Turing, hit the top 10 for the first time with a haul of $11m after expanding from limited release. And controversial comedy The Interview, about the attempted assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by TV journalists played by Seth Rogen and James Franco, took $2.8m from just 331 cinemas after opening on limited release on Christmas Day. The film has also scored an impressive $15m via video-on-demand release, studio Sony’s best ever online debut.
