Watch The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies Online Free In this week’s instalment of our series tracking cinema’s worldwide winners …
Formidable German opening for Battle of the Five Armies
Ridley Scott may have played it too safe with Exodus
Chris Rock outpaces Woody Allen in the US with Top Five
The winner
Bilbo Baggins showed stout legs on the last stage of his journey, The Battle of the Five Armies, picking up $122.2m (£78m) in 38 territories. That might look to be down on overseas openings for the previous instalments, An Unexpected Journey ($138m) and Desolation of Smaug ($135.4m)
but it unrolled in nearly 10 fewer markets, so no cause for alarm. With methodical marketing that has emphasised the film as not only the culmination of the trilogy, but of 17 years on Tolkien duty for director Peter Jackson, it would be quite a shock if the film didn’t see a rally from Desolation of Smaug’s $958.4m worldwide take (a predictable middle-instalment slip from the first’s $1.01bn). Next week’s US opening will have a big say – perhaps why Warner opted to open the film internationally first, in order to reinforce the sense of a universal phenomenon that will fire up easily jaded American audiences. Five Armies would have to take $1.11bn to rule them all in terms of the entire Middle Earth sextet – that was Return of the King’s eventual total, making it the eighth highest-grossing film of all time.
In terms of individual countries, Five Armies is doing best-ever Hobbit business in the UK, France, Mexico, New Zealand, probably in Russia (where admissions are high, but the rouble crisis is depressing its dollar-take) and, most resoundingly, in Germany. There, its $20.5m debut is not only a series high ($15m: Unexpected; $19m: Desolation), it’s also topped the 2014 openings chart by some distance. Germany
was the most lucrative non-US market, ahead, surprisingly, of the UK, for both of the other two Hobbit movies; a nice nod to the northern European cultural roots of JRR Tolkien’s original myth-making.
US film-goers didn’t exactly flock to Ridley Scott and Christian Bale’s standard this weekend, with their Moses epic Exodus: Gods and Kings managing a half-hearted $24.1m at first pass. That’s significantly short of the more radical Noah’s $43.7m in March, $25.6m for Fox’s Jesus outing Son of God in February – let alone the $83.8m for Passion of the Christ, which was in Aramaic, for you-know-who’s sake. Thirty per cent of Exodus’s audience identified themselves as “very religious”, and distributor Fox will need them to continue turning out to bulk up box office over the Christmas season. But given that Noah rode out many squalls about its unorthodox spin on the Bible to an eventual $362.6m worldwide, whereas the only flak Exodus has received has been about its racial casting policy, perhaps Scott should have been more adventurous story-wise. Currently on $73.7m across all territories, it’s not holding up especially well in the spate of Christian-dominated countries it kicked off in last week: -49% in South Korea, -53% in Spain, -53% in Mexico (even with The Hobbit yet to open in those three). Turkey and Israel opened, both down on Noah, this week – the most significant among a scattering of minor territories before most of western Europe and the Middle East weighs in around Christmas Day.
That was the name invoked in a fair few reviews for Chris Rock’s third directorial effort Top Five, in which Woody-ish New York amblings and musings happen to comedian-actor Andre Allen (played by Rock) in the company of a beautiful journalist (Rosario Dawson) who spins his life around. Critics seem to agree that the film – staffed by superior talent, including director of photography Manuel Alberto Claro (Nymphomaniac), producers Jay Z and Kanye West and executive music producer Questlove (of the Roots) – is a cut above mainstream African-American output, tempering the typical raucous comedy with greater control and character subtleties. Rock also – like a certain Jewish icon – cannily refracts his leading role through the prism of his own star persona. And his huge fanbase almost appears to give him the edge in box-office terms over Allen in the US: $6.9m is far higher than any of the legend’s openings (the best being $3.9m for Small Time Crooks), though inflation-corrected results for some of Allen’s canonic works might rearrange the picture. Allen, though, isn’t limited by a strongly ethnic fanbase, which has allowed him to notch up some significant worldwide tallies, especially recently (Midnight in Paris: $151.1m; Blue Jasmine: $97.5m). It’s an exciting prospect that an African-American director could widen his appeal beyond his immediate constituency to land on similar levels of success: Top Five will get a limited release in mostly English-speaking countries early next year, which is a start. Now all Rock has to do is put in a hot-streak to match the one Allen enjoyed in the 70s and 80s.
The rest of the world
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There was no Rentrak data for India or China this week, which meant that weekend one for Rajinikanth’s Tamil blockbuster Lingaa and weekend two for barnstorming Chinese schooldays drama Fleet of Time were a little hazy. There’s been initial speculation that Lingaa had taken 102 crore ($16.2m), which would make it the fastest Tamil film to pass the 100-crore mark – but India’s sketchy box-office reporting systems have thrown up much dust around that claim. Zhang Yibai’s Fleet of Time looks to have reached an impressive $72.61m over its first week, closing the gap on Vicky Zhao’s So Young, the film that started off the nostalgic college-days drama fad in 2013 and earned $116m. The two new international newcomers we do know about are Korean indie documentary My Love, Don’t Cross That River, in 11th place globally; and Italian comedy Il Ricco, Il Povero e Il Maggiordomo (The Rich, The Poor and the Butler), in 15th place. Having opened two weeks ago and expanded massively since to climb up the charts in South Korea, the former follows a 98-year-old and an 89-year-old who have been married for 76 years. It’s currently outpacing Interstellar and Exodus there – now that is what you call stamina.
