'The Revenant' braves the blizzard with $16M at box office

NEW YORK (AP) — The snowy frontier saga "The Revenant" weathered a blizzard-ravaged box office.

Weekend movie-going was affected up and down the East Coast by Winter Storm Jonas, which forced theater closures in Washington D.C. and New York, and caused hundreds of theaters to suspend showings.

Studio executives said the storm had a major effect on business.

Fittingly, the film that most flourished in the frigid winter weather was 20th Century Fox's Oscar-nominated "Revenant," which took in an estimated $16 million in its third week of wide release.

The Alejandro Inarritu-directed thriller, set in the 1820s, is proving to be one of Leonardo DiCaprio's biggest hits with $119.2 million in North America thus far.

Last week's No. 1 movie, the Kevin Hart-Ice Cube comedy "Ride Along 2," dropped steeply in its second week, sliding to third with $13 million for Universal.

Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for box-office firm Rentrak, said the storm had an effect, but cautioned against overestimating its impact.

Lionsgate's "Dirty Grandpa," starring Robert De Niro and Zac Efron, received some of the harshest reviews of the year.

"The Boy," a PG-13 rated supernatural tale that cost only about $10 million to make, earned an estimated $11.3 million.

Sony's "The 5th Wave," which cost about $38 million to make, is a young-adult adaption from the first of Rick Yancey's trilogy of science-fiction books about alien invasion.

Starring Chloe Grace Moretz, "The 5th Wave" $10.7 million debut didn't suggest a budding YA franchise.

"Jonas was certainly no friend to the movie industry," Bruer said.