Box office

YOUR FIRST 2014 WEEKEND BOX OFFICE: Disney has an animated hit on its hands—and no competition in the kids’ sector—with Frozen, which is kissing close to $300m in domestic grosses after seven weeks. And if the movie has legs, so does the soundtrack album (see below). Not surprisingly, considering the time of year, family fare trumped scary-movie sequel, in this case the debuting Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones, though their per-screen takes were nearly identical. Possible Oscar contenders from three auteurs—Jackson, Scorsese and Russell—are in the Top 5, indicating that grown-ups also took advantage of their time off. The #6 grosser, Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues (another Paramount film), earned $11.1m, a 44% drop in its third week, but enough to take it well north of $100m domestically. Towering over every other recent release is the second installment of Lionsgate’s Hunger Games franchise, which has now at $407m after seven weekends.

1. Frozen (2013) (Disney) – $20.7m (-28%), 3,318/$6,245 avg. (week 7)
2. Paranormal Activity: The Marked Ones (Paramount) – $18.2m, 2,867/$6,348 avg. (debut)
3. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug (WB) – $16.3m (-44%), 3,730/$4,357 avg. (week 4)
4. The Wolf of Wall Street (Paramount) – $13.4m (-27%), 2,557/$5,241 avg. (week 2)
5. American Hustle (Sony) – $13.2m (-30%), 2,518/$5,242 avg. (week 4)

Of the limited-release Oscar contenders, the best per-theater business was done by WB’s Spike Jonze-directed Her, which averaged a scintillating $15,362 in 47 theaters in its third week, and the Coen brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis, from CBS, which averaged a solid $7,532 on 156 screens in week five. (1/6a)