A leading Hollywood industry watcher has called 2014 “the year of the Bible movie,” as “Exodus: Gods And Kings” ascended to the number one spot at the North American box office this weekend.
The Ridley Scott movie opened with a $24.5 million debut. Rentrak analyst Paul Dergarabedian called this “a perfect release date (that) put it in the sweet spot of the holiday season, and just ahead of the debut of some major titles later this week.”
But overall, this was a down weekend for Hollywood as compared to last year, when one movie alone garnered $73.7 million: “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug.”
Going into this weekend, “The Hunter Games: Mockingjay, Part 1” had ruled three weeks at number one, but slipped to number two with a $13.2 million weekend, bringing its domestic gate total to $277.4 million. It is now the second biggest movie of the year, behind only “Guardians Of The Galaxy” and its $332.3 million.
“Penguins Of Madagascar” was in third, with a$7.3 million weekend.
“Top Five” debuted in the top four, with Chris Rock’s directorial debut doing $7.2 million in its opening weekend.
The remaining top 10 movies this weekend, as estimated by the studios and collated by Rentrak, were “Big Hero 6” ($6.1 million), “Interstellar” ($5.5 million), “Horrible Bosses 2” ($4.6 million), “Dumb And Dumber To” ($2.8 million), “Theory Of Everything” ($2.5 million) and “Wild” ($1.6 million).
