Box Office Breakdown: Rogue One and Hidden Figures in Virtual Dead Heat for Number One

Update 1/10/2017: Now that the actuals are in, Hidden Figures did indeed come out on top with $22.8 million, beating expectations by about a million bucks.  Rogue One increased as well (up to $22 million), but obviously not by enough to stay at number one.  

Original Article: The big box office story this week is how we won't really know who won the weekend until the actual grosses are released late Monday.  As it stands now, the estimates have Rogue One hanging onto the top spot by the thinnest of margins (less than $200,000), but it could easily switch with the feel-good historical drama Hidden Figures.   If they do swap spots, it would mark the first time in three weeks the Star Wars spin-off didn't come out on top.  Regardless, Rogue One is now only about $9 million away from taking the 2016 highest domestic grossing film title away from Finding Dory, which if you're following along at home means that Disney just stole the number one spot from itself.  Further proof of Disney's dominance is that it now owns six of the top ten highest domestic grossing films of the year, and worldwide, it owns the entire top five.

Hidden Figures rode to an extremely successful wide-release expansion this weekend (it originally opened on Christmas day in limited release) on crazy good word of mouth (A+ Cinemascore), as well as across the board good reviews (as of this writing, the film has 93% on Rotten Tomatoes).  The biographical drama is being marketed as a warm and fuzzy adult alternative to the animated kid's flicks and grim four-quadrant action adventures that surround it in the top ten.  With its modest budget of $25 million, the tactic has already paid off, and it might be tapping into the same diverse audience that made The Help and The Butler such enormous blockbusters back in 2011 and 2013.

A few other notes:

• Although not quite as close as the the top two, Sing still only lags less than $2.5 million behind either, and on a weekend with less terrible weather, might have gotten even closer.
• With $80 million domestic and $185 million worldwide, it looks like Chris Pratt and Jennifer Lawrence narrowly avoided bombing with Passengers, the same can't be said for Assassin's Creed which will never make back its absurd $125 million budget.  Someday a great movie will be made from a video game...but not today.
• The lone new release this weekend, Underworld: Blood Wars, opened in fourth with the lowest opening weekend of the Underworld franchise, proving once more that vampires have no problem sucking.

Check out the full three day estimated top ten:*

1. Rogue One: A Star Wars Story - $21.9 million
2. Hidden Figures - $21.8 million
3. Sing - $19.5 million
4. Underworld: Blood Wars - $13.1 million
5. La La Land - $10 million
6. Passengers - $8.8 million
7. Why Him? - $6.5 million
8. Moana - $6.4 million
9. Fences - $4.7 million
10. Assassin's Creed - $3.8 million

Wide-releases coming next week: The Bye Bye Man, Monster Trucks, Sleepless

*Box office stats courtesy of boxofficemojo.com.