The drama — which tells the true story of the trio of African-American mathematicians who helped NASA launch astronaut John Glenn into orbit in 1962 — is now on a two-week winning streak that has already seen it double its production costs and generate overwhelmingly positive reviews from general audiences and professional critics alike. But it wasn’t the only critical darling to do well over the weekend.
Whiplash director Damian Chazelle’s modern musical La La Land, which recently swept every category it was nominated in at this year’s Golden Globe Awards, enjoyed a nice bump from both the positive buzz it’s receiving and the additional 333 theaters it expanded into this week. The film seems to be catching fire at just the right time for a run at the Academy Awards, so it will be interesting to see if it can hold onto that momentum.
| # | Title | Weekend | U.S. Total | Worldwide Total |
| 1. | Hidden Figures | $20.4M | $54.8M | $54.8M |
| 2. | La La Land | $14.5M | $74M | $128.8M |
| 3. | Sing | $13.8M | $233M | $397.3M |
| 4. | Rogue One: A Star Wars Story | $13.7M | $498.8M | $979.9M |
| 5. | The Bye Bye Man | $13.3M | $13.3M | $14.6M |
| 6. | Patriots Day | $12M | $12.9M | $12.9M |
| 7. | Monster Trucks | $10.5M | $10.5M | $25.2M |
| 8. | Sleepless | $8.4M | $8.4M | $8.4M |
| 9. | Underworld: Blood Wars | $5.8M | $23.9M | $70.7M |
| 10. | Passengers | $5.6M | $90M | $237.1M |
The Star Wars stand-alone movie Rogue One slipped all the way to fourth place over the weekend, but it still managed to set a major milestone with its $13.7 million weekend. The film snuck past Finding Dory to become the highest-grossing movie of 2016 in U.S. theaters, and is creeping up on Finding Dory and Zootopia from fourth place on the worldwide box-office rankings for the year.
Of the week’s new releases, horror film The Bye Bye Man out-performed expectations for a respectable $13.3 million weekend in the U.S. — which isn’t too shabby for a movie that only cost $7.4 million to make. On the flip side, neither the family-friendly creature comedy Monster Trucks nor the Jamie Foxx cop drama Sleepless performed very well at the box office, so both films are probably in for a tough time in theaters.
This week, it’s extreme sports action on the big screen in xXx: Return of Xander Cage, which will test just how potent Vin Diesel’s star power is. There’s also the latest thriller from Sixth Sense and Signs filmmaker M. Night Shyamalan, Split, which will test whether the celebrated director really has found his groove again after several years of disappointing projects and now a recent run of well-received movies.
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