‘The Revenant’ braves the blizzard with $16M at box office

Leonardo DiCaprio (Internet photo)

NEW YORK – The snowy frontier saga “The Revenant” fared best out of the movies that tried to survive a blizzard-ravaged box office.

Weekend moviegoing was affected up and down the East Coast by Winter Storm Jonas, which forced theatre closures in Washington D.C. and New York, and caused hundreds of theaters to suspend showings. Studio executives said the storm had a major effect on business.

“It had a huge effect on the entire marketplace,” said Kevin Grayson, head of domestic distribution for STX Entertainment, which debuted the horror thriller “The Boy.” ”Anywhere from 300 to 400 theaters were affected.”

Fittingly, the film that triumphed in the frigid winter weather was 20th Century Fox’s Oscar-nominated “Revenant,” which took in an estimated $16 million in its third week of wide release. The Alejandro Inarritu-directed thriller, set in the 1820s, is proving to be one of Leonardo DiCaprio’s biggest hits with $119.2 million thus far.

Disney’s “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” came in second with $14.3 million in its sixth week of release. “The Force Awakens,” with $1.94 billion globally to date, will likely cross $2 billion in the next week.

Last week’s No. 1 movie, the Kevin Hart-Ice Cube comedy “Ride Along 2,” dropped steeply in its second week, sliding to third with $13 million for Universal.

Those holdovers were trailed by a trio of new releases: “Dirty Grandpa,” “The Boy” and “The 5th Wave,” which all earned $10 million to $12 million over the weekend.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for Rentrak, said the storm had an effect, but cautioned against overestimating its impact.

“It probably altered the box office 10 or 12 percent overall,” Dergarabedian said. “This was never predestined to be an earth-shattering box office weekend, anyway.”

Lionsgate’s “Dirty Grandpa,” starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron, received some of the harshest reviews of the year. It narrowly edged out the other newcomers with an estimated $11.5 million.

“The Boy,” a PG-13 rated supernatural tale that cost only about $10 million to make, earned an estimated $11.3 million. It appealed strongly to Latino moviegoers, which made up 41 per cent of the audience, according to STX.

Sony’s “The 5th Wave,” which cost about $38 million to make, is a young-adult adaption from the first of Rick Yancey’s trilogy of science-fiction books about alien invasion. Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, “The 5th Wave” debut .

7 million didn’t suggest a budding YA franchise. But Rory Bruer, head of distribution for Sony, was upbeat about the result and said it came in “ahead of our expectations with the storm.”

“But Jonas was certainly no friend to the movie industry,” Bruer said.

Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Monday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Rentrak. Where available, the latest international numbers for Friday through Sunday are also included.

Final domestic figures will be released Tuesday.

1. The Revenant, $16 million.

3. Star Wars: The Force Awakens, $14.3 million.

3. Ride Along 2, $13 million.

4. Dirty Grandpa, $11.5 million.

5. The Boy, $11.3 million.

6. The 5th Wave, $10.7 million.

7. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, $9.8 million.

8. Daddy’s Home, $5.3 million.

9. Norm of the North, $4.1 million.

10. The Big Short, $3.5 million.