'The Hobbit' Crosses $200M Mark as 'Django' and 'Les Mis' Open Strong

This continues to be … unexpected.

That was a joke we made last weekend when Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey held on to the top slot at the box office in its second weekend. Well, despite strong showings by both Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained and Tom Hooper’s Les Miserables, The Hobbit maintained its hold on the box-office top slot, besting all newcomers.

In doing so, Jackson’s debut Hobbit film – the first in a planned trilogy – surpassed the $200M mark, standing at $222M after three weekends. Apparently the audience for Tolkien adaptations remains healthy, and fans are responding favorably to Jackson’s first steps back into Middle-earth.

The significance of Django and Les Mis both opening to such inflated numbers is the fact that neither movie is very short, meaning theaters can only screen the movie only so many times a day. Even with that limitation, Tarantino’s bloody slavery opera notched an impressive $64M six-day opening, while Hooper’s Les Mis boosted its Oscar odds with a $67.4M opening.

Parental Guidance was the other newcomer making waves in the weekend Top 10. Comedic stars Billy Crystal and Bette Midler powered the family comedy to a healthy $29.5M opening, not quite mirroring the major starts by the Meet the Parents films, but still admirable given the amount of competition at the box office at the moment.

Here’s the full Top 10 list for the weekend:

MOVIE / WEEKEND / TOTAL