What movie won the weekend box office?

Last week I predicted that The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug would debut very strong at the weekend box office. That wasn't a stretch, of course, and the only real question was just how much this second film in the Peter Jackson Hobbit trilogy would make.

Clearly, the world still loves The Hobbit. The Desolation of Smaug took in nearly $73.7 million in its debut weekend, easily beating all other competitors to take that coveted top spot. That's slightly less than The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey made last December when it came out - but as The Hollywood Reporter points out, Smaug had a lot more competition for our box office dollars.

Things get a lot more interesting when we take a look at the rest of the top five. Coming in at number two this past weekend is Disney's Frozen, a film with stellar reviews and great word of mouth. Frozen made an additional $22.2 million, bringing it's total to $164.4 million. And no, I'm not surprised that Frozen is still going strong, but I am a little surprised that it managed to beat the debut of Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas. Madea is a force to be reckoned with at the box office, but even though this newest installment made $16 million, that's still the lowest Madea film debut ever. What's going on? Competition, that's what.

The number four and five slots at the weekend box office are filled by two movies that proved to have major staying power (not surprisingly): The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($13.2 million) and Thor: The Dark World ($2.7 million). Both of these movies might drop out of the top five once new films like Saving Mr. Banks and American Hustle move into wide release in coming days. I, for one, can't wait to see both of these films. It's going to be tough choosing which one to see first!

Photo courtesy of Nerdist.com