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With regards to actual box office, there isn’t much to discuss today. John Hamann’s Weekend Wrap-Up yesterday included Sunday estimates. Studios are fully aware of the glorious nature of holiday box office, which explains why so many great titles are all released around the same time. Even as studios distribute fewer films each year, December still bears witnesses to more major releases than any other month, even the summer ones. Hollywood corporations know where their bread gets buttered.

Yesterday’s number one film was once again The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. The initial weekend estimate of $31.5 million was impressively precise. Smaug grossed $10.6 million on Sunday, and what is important here is that it was up 23% or $2 million from Friday. That rise is an early warning signal of what will transpire this week.

Anchorman: The Rise of Ron Burgundy’s numbers have not changed. The explanation for this is simple and important. Some studios give their employees the entire week off. The result is that the box office figures over the holidays are a lot sloppier than normal. Keeping this in mind, BOP expresses our gratitude to the unlucky few stuck reciting box office numbers to people like us this week. Truly, you are the greatest heroes of our time.

All of the other top 12 titles in release right now will be discussed in detail as the next two weeks ensue. The noteworthy ones today are those that are significantly different from their initial weekend estimates. The third place film on Sunday, Disney’s Frozen, earned almost half a million more than projected. American Hustle and Saving Mr. Banks, the other titles in the top five, were estimated almost perfectly as was the sixth place entry, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.

A Madea Christmas and Walking with Dinosaurs are a bit less fortunate as they fall $100,000 and $200,000 short of projections, respectively. Walking with Dinosaurs is an $80 million catastrophe at the moment although it won’t seem quote so bad in a couple of weeks. In terms of opportunity cost, this project could be the worst disaster of 2013 in my opinion, though. It’s a highly respected brand that translated into a movie targeted to five-year-olds and especially stupid ones at that.

The conversation tomorrow will involve the comparison between last Monday’s box office totals for titles already in release relative to today’s numbers. Spoilers: the ordinary rule of weekly decline in the 50% range is out the window. Instead, most titles will experience an increase from last week. The Twelve Days of Box office exist outside the realm of regular box office behavior.

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