Originally Posted by
JasonEvans
As others have identified, it is coming down to American Hustle versus Anchorman 2 for the 5th spot in our contest.
At the moment, Anchorman 2 leads American Hustle by $95.5 mil to $72.9 mil, a gap of around $23 million. Over the weekend, Anch2 beat American Hustle by half a million (20.5 - 19.6) but Hustle appears to be showing a bit more staying power during the week. On Tuesday, American Hustle made $5.4 mil while Anch2 made $4.9 mil. It also seems likely that Hustle, as an Oscar front-runner, will get a nice award bump throughout January while Anchorman is likely to fade, especially once kids go back to school over the next couple weeks.
If I had to guess, I would say that around the end of January, we will see Hustle top Anchorman, but is likely to be very close. I'll update periodically with the gap between the two films.
-Jason "$23 mil is a big gap to make up considering Anchorman2 is still doing strong business in theaters" Evans
Another weekend down and the gap, though narrowing, is still pretty darn big.
American Hustle made $12.4 mil last weekend. Anchorman2 made $10.6 million. That puts the current race between these two at--
Anchorman 2 - $108,713,000
Amer. Hustle - $87,923,000
So, the gap is currently $20.8 million. While there are signs that Anchorman 2 is slowing down a bit more than Hustle (it dropped 45.9% from last weekend, while Hustle only fell 33.7%), there is still a lot of room between these two flicks. I do expect Hustle to get an Oscar nomination bounce when noms are announced on Thursday Jan 16th but if I had to guess I would say it will be a tiny bit too little, too late for Hustle to catch Anchorman 2 by our self-imposed end-of-January deadline.
-Jason "it is going to be very close, I expect... " Evans