On the hijacked plane with no layovers that is life, more audiences put their faith in Liam Neeson to take control, with Non-Stop edging out Son Of God for first place over the weekend. The battle between these two tales as old as man saw Non-Stop rack up north of $30 million for Liam Neeson reacting like Liam Neeson to something being taken, this time in the sky. Jesus’ greatest hits reel from History Channel’s The Bible had $26.5 million rendered unto it and his markedly less thrilling set of skills, such as forgiveness. And their combined success was enough to knock over the Lego Movie tower America had been building for the past three weeks, and finally kick its own messiah fable down to third place. Still, as all three movies teach us, you should never count anyone out.
Disciples also flocked to another familiar scripture, paying a collective $1.34 million to check out the newly reinterpreted, New Jokes version of Anchorman 2, which opened in 14th place. Unless Ferrell and Adam McKay have found another way to remix it—a special 3-D edition with new CGI aliens, say—this likely marks the final time you’ll see the name Anchorman near the top of the box office charts.
The opposite is true for Frozen: It’s now passed $1 billion worldwide, putting it in the rare club of movies that weren’t sequels or re-releases to hit that mark; its upcoming Japanese debut could push it into the Top 10 highest-grossing movies ever. It also continues to muscle in on Toy Story 3’s territory for top-grossing animated film of all time. (Meanwhile, the very limited, one-theater release of the Oscar-nominated Ernest And Celestine—and its $15,600 take—suggests that hand-drawn animation has probably seen its day on that list.) And as Frozen hangs on to the Top 10 more than 15 weeks into its run, it seems destined to stick around as long as the ice and snow the movie pretends is so wonderful it makes you want to goddamn sing, like you just wish winter would never fucking end. Right.
The slightly more seasonally accurate Stalingrad had a decent opening on the indie circuit at 24th place, just behind Repentance—the Forest Whitaker-starring indie drama we’ll just assume benefited from audiences theater-hopping after Son Of God. And further down were two very different movies about men and containers, The Lunchbox and The Bag Man, with the Indian drama earning more than $20,000 in the one extra theater it had over the latter—this despite The Bag Man’s attempted resurrection of an age when Robert De Niro and John Cusack in a quippy crime thriller might have drawn acolytes of the Church of Tarantino. Alas, not every faith is as everlasting as the one in Liam Neeson.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.