“Hidden Figures” Soars Again at the Box Office

After last week's narrow victory over Rogue One, Hidden Figures was the clear winner of the battle of the box office this weekend. Adding about 800 more screens, the film only dropped about 10 percent. That's basically unheard of for a No. 1 movie, but Hidden Figures is a hit with just about every demographic. And it's likely to continue to rake in the cash throughout January, given the lack of competition.

La La Land has also been on an unstoppable upward trajectory. Adding about 300 more screens, it had its best weekend to date and has now pulled in nearly $75 million. And given how little audiences are responding to any true 2017 releases, it might just hit No. 1 soon.

Sing beat out Rogue One, but just barely. It's now passed Moana and jumped into the top 10 highest-grossing films of 2016. But Rogue One hit the bigger milestone: It passed Finding Dory to become the biggest movie of the past year in North America, and it's on its way to becoming the fourth movie of the year to top $1 billion worldwide. (Fun fact: Disney released all five of the biggest movies of 2016 worldwide.)

And all these older movies beat out The Bye Bye Man, which used its Friday the 13th release date to scare up a decent $13.3 million, which is almost double its budget. Surprisingly, that did better than any of the other new wide releases, including bigger films from stars like Jamie Foxx, Mark Wahlberg and Ben Affleck.

Outside the top 5:

• This Weekend's Indie Champ: Worlds Apart, Chris Papakaliatis' mini-trilogy about love among Greek citizens and their foreign partners. It made $14,000 on its lone screen.
• Patriots Day, the big screen dramatization of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, failed to capture an audience. Debuting at No. 6 in its first weekend of wide release, the drama couldn't top four older films and a cheap horror flick. But that's still better than Live by Night (No. 11), the gangster picture from Ben Affleck. Affleck's last two films as a director (Argo and The Town) were sizable hits.
• But let's hear it for Monster Trucks, which fulfilled Paramount's worst expectations, debuting with only $10.5 million despite costing a rumored $125 million.

Next week: M. Night Shyamalan continues his reclamation tour with Split, a thriller starring James McAvoy as a kidnapper with 23 personalities. It's received surprisingly good reviews from more genre-friendly critics. I think it opens with $20 million, which is slightly below 2015's surprisingly good The Visit. It goes head-to-head with XXX 3: The Return of Xander Cage, which will again prove a wide audience only wants to see Vin Diesel in a Fast & Furious movie.