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The weekdays were down a massive 68%, dropping from $24.7 million to $7.9 million. Even though these particular numbers are from Thanksgiving, they reinforce the premise of how much holidays will boost a project’s box office. In week four, the total was $21.6 million, a 63% drop. After this, normalcy was established in later weeks. The fifth week for Skyfall saw revenue of $14.7 million, a modest 32% decline. The numbers for week six were $9.7 million, a 34% decline.

Before we get to The Hobbit, I want to illuminate one other aspect of The Twelve Days of Box Office. Conveniently, the seventh and eighth weeks of Skyfall occurred during this timeframe. In week seven, Skyfall grossed $9.9 million. This is an increase of 2% from the previous week. Week eight’s tally, the New Year’s period, was $8.7 million, only a million less than the total two weeks before. The absence of box office depreciation is a perfect embodiment of the principle of holiday box office inflation.

Circling back to The Hobbit, its second week of box office was $76.6 million, a 32% drop from the previous total of $113.2 million. In week three, the total was $56.6 million, a 26% decline. Neither of those totals appears particularly impressive at the surface level. Once we introduce the fourth and fifth weeks into the equation, the story changes.

The Hobbit’s fourth week is the first one without holiday inflation as a factor. The total for this frame is only $22.8 million, a 60% decline. More importantly, this total represents vanishing revenue in the amount of roughly $34 million. It is the difference between a healthy movie and a dying one. The instant the holidays were over, The Hobbit began to struggle.

By the fifth week, The Hobbit’s weekly earnings had dropped to $11.9 million. With this latest 48% drop, it is effectively done at the domestic box office. What happened to change the situation? The lucrative holiday period ended. In the process, The Hobbit’s take was no longer artificially inflated.

Summarizing the data, The Hobbit experienced modest declines of 32% and 26% during the holiday period. Once that timeframe ended, the box office demand died quickly with 60% and 48% drops in January. The Hobbit suffered the fate of diminished demand from its predecessors. Its release during the Twelve Days of Box Office is all that saved it from performing similarly to other 2012 reboots such as The Bourne Legacy and The Amazing Spider-Man.

Contrast The Hobbit’s data to that of Skyfall. The latest Bond movie’s weekly drops were fairly consistent at 45%, 34%, 63%, 32% and 34%. The single outlier was due to the unique nature of the third week of box office. This dramatic drop happened due to the holiday inflation of Thanksgiving while the fourth week occurred during the dead period of early December. After Skyfall reached the holidays, its box office actually maintained the same relative level for three consecutive weeks.

This data is the blueprint example of how a rising tide can lift all boats. Skyfall has more overall demand than The Hobbit yet when comparing weekly performance, the Middle Earth movie looks better for the first month. The late December box office period is so lucrative that even the most frontloaded movie can appear to be a solid performer. Conversely, any November release that hangs around long enough to maintain a strong theater presence during late December also benefits.

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