Battle at the Box Office 1/13

Riding strong reviews, Lone Survivor took the top spot in it’s first weekend of wide release.  Doing vastly better than any recent war movies, it had the second best January opening ever, behind Cloverfield, with $38.5 million.  With it’s focus on the soldiers and not politics like, say, Zero Dark Thirty, definitely probably helped it reach a larger audience.  Frozen dropped down to second place again with $15 million and it’s made over $317 million total.  The Wolf of Wall Street jumped up to third place with $9 million.  The Legend of Hercules, just barely avoiding getting the fabled 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, made a kind of terrible $8.6 million on a $70 million budget.  It definitely seemed like the least important of the various historical epics coming this year.  American Hustle rounded out the top 5 with another $8.6 million, putting it over $100 million in total.  Further down the list, August: Osage County went wider this weekend and jumped up to seventh place with $7.3 million while Her, also going wide, had a disappointing $5.4 million take, despite pretty much unanimous praise from critics.  The concept seems a little out there for mainstream audiences but it will probably get some Oscar noms this coming Thursday, so it might get a little bit of a bump.