The staff at BoxOffice has put up a list of estimates of how much the main fall movies, including The Hobbit: Battle of Five Armies, will gross in the North American market. They reckon it will do about $68 million on its opening weekend (December 17) and end up with $297 million. Compare that with The Desolation of Smaug, which pulled in nearly $74 million its first weekend and make a bit over $258 million. Given how much of big blockbusters’ income now is earned overseas, it’s possible that BoFA could bring in over a billion dollars worldwide.
The only films on the list with higher estimates are The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 ($393 million domestic gross) and Interstellar ($340 million).
The list doesn’t include the big films that will be opening around Christmas. If some of those prove really big successes, they might cause a sharp drop in the weeks after the opening. But we can hope that the last installment in Peter Jackson’s Tolkien series has legs!
