Box Office Week: Moana manages to barely hold onto #1 with $18.8 mil. Rival newcomer Office Christmas Party comes close with $17.5 mil but ends up at #2. Meanwhile La La Land opens in 5 theaters to $855,000, giving it the tenth highest per theater average of all time with $171,000.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	Moana	$18,842,000	$238,808,593	3
2	Office Christmas Party	$17,500,000	$33,900,000	1
3	Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them	$10,785,000	$680,010,903	4
4	Arrival	$5,600,000	$129,851,708	5
5	Doctor Strange	$4,631,000	$645,762,446	6

Notable Box Office Stories:

• While it came close Moana managed to hold onto number one with $18.8 mil this weekend. This marked a drop of around 33%, a pretty smooth drop for the film. The obvious comparison to see how Moana is doing is Frozen, which opened at the same time to good but not quite amazing numbers and managed to barrel its way to $1 bil. Right now it would seem like the two films are on the same track, as Frozen by now had made $140.4 mil domestic $196.3 mil worldwide. However a deeper look shows that Frozen had only opened in about half the international markets that Moana is now currently playing in. This is the real worry-spot for Moana. First up is the China problem. Already the film is out of the top 5 and looking to close very soon with maybe only $35 mil - $45 mil. Then there's the UK. Moana opened in the UK even worse than The Good Dinosaur, making only $2.8 mil there so far. In comparison Frozen finished its UK run at $64.7 mil. These middling foreign grosses are a bad sign for Moana's future but there are still possible major markets like Germany, Italy, Brazil, South Korea, and most importantly Japan (who notably addd $249 mil to Frozen's overall take). Domestically things aren't looking good either. While Rogue One seems to be a bit too heavy for kids, one still expects the great tracking for the film means it will be a four quadrant hit so Moana might get some good counter-programming money or it could lose audience share. And then next week expect Moana to drop hard when Sing is released. Ultimately right now Moana isn't looking like The Good Dinosaur but it's definitely no Frozen and I'd be surprised if it ended up making more than $500 mil when all is said and done.

• While Office Christmas Party didn't ignite the box office it still came out okay opening to #2 with $17.5 mil as well as $16.4 mil overseas. The film's release is clearly trying to capture the same magic as last year's Sisters, which also opened in the teens but managed to stick around as an adult holiday comedy counter-programming choice and closing with $87 mil. In this regard OCP is on a good track, with the same Cinemascore as Sisters (B) and opening even better. However Sisters opened against a little movie called The Force Awakens while OCP opened against...nothing so maybe the legs won't be as strong here. The real test will next weekend. If the film doesn't drop too much it could very easily be like Sisters and actually go up the Christmas weekend. With such an expanded cast there's a lot of promotional opportunities but this one's success has quite been etched in stone yet.

• While the promotional blitz for La La Land clearly didn't make it obvious the film was opening in only 5 theaters this weekend (thanks a lot Hollywood), it did mean those 5 theaters were packed to the rafters as the film managed to come in with $855,000 at #15 this weekend. That means it has a per theater average of $171,000, the highest for the year and the tenth best PTA of all time. The film is riding high off the promotional tour from Emma Stone and just won big at the first televised awards season of the run, the Critic's Choice Awards. La La Land is primed to become the big hit of awards season but the question now is when does it expand? It's a tough call for Summit. It feels like the obvious choice is get the damn thing in a ton of theaters by Christmas, as it feels like the perfect "we can all agree on this" movie. But we have four new major releases ahead including Rogue One so the space is pretty damn crowded as is. So maybe Summit should expand to a comfortable 300 - 400 theaters then exploded out into the doldrums of post Christmas/January malaise. Whatever they decide, Summit has just been pitched the slowest underhand pitch possible so if they don't knock it out of the park they only have themselves to blame.

• Besides La La Land we saw some other major expansions for Oscar films this week. First up is Nocturnal Animals which expanded to 1,200 theaters this weekend, making $3.19 mil for weekend at #7. This represented a solid if not amazing expansion for the film, at least in comparison to Manchester by the Sea which continues to be the surprise box office success of the season. The film made $3.15 mil at #8 for weekend, a pretty close haul to Nocturnal Animals but Manchester is in 1/4th the theaters. It is interesting to me to see the expansion for Manchester grow in comparison to Moonlight which continues to slow down, dropping 30% this week to earn $589,627 despite being in more theaters than Manchester. So why is Manchester succeeding so well while Moonlight seems to only be a minor hit, despite both getting the same incredible reviews and Oscar buzz? Could be a few things. For one Manchester is much easier to market. Moonlight is a more surreal quiet film, while Manchester on the outside looks like the kind of Oscar bait movie that was popular in the 80s and 90s about small town people with personal issues. Also while Moonlight will likely win Best Supporting Actor, it feels like it's dropped to third in the race behind La La Land and Manchester for Best Picture. And finally it could just be a story of a blue collar white person dealing with personal loss is a more widely appealing story than following the young of a gay black man. Finally Miss Sloane, a drama that hoped to get more Best Actress buzz but couldn't as it opened at #11 with $1.9 mil.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Moonlight	$9,896,107	$10,804,378	$5 mil	8
Your Name	N/A	$243,100,000	Unk	15

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Finding Dory	$486,295,561	$1,027,191,194	$200 mil
The Birth of a Nation	$15,861,566	$15,861,566	$8.5 mil

As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice.

Submitted December 12, 2016 at 10:08PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2hvNlG6