We're heading into the extended holiday season, which would typically mean two things in the world of the box office: big festive releases and wannabe Oscar players. We aren't quite there with the former and probably never will be unless Wonder Woman 1984 manages to hold onto its current December release date. We are, however, seeing smidgens of progress with the latter. While the Academy changed its rules for 2021 eligibility, the chances are that most of those awards titles will still play their seven-day theatrical runs before jumping very quickly to on-demand.

This week, the top film at the box office was Freaky, starring Vince Vaughn, which made $3.71 million from 2,472 theaters. It was the only new title of the week to chart in the top ten that wasn't a re-release. Once again, Disney decided to stick to their new strategy and got Guardians of the Galaxy into cinemas for a $406k weekend. Weird. I thought Worst Chris was canceled or something. Other studios are getting into the re-release game now. Elf received a suitably pre-festive drop back into theaters and brought in $170k from 300 theaters.

A number of indie titles got theatrical releases this week, which at least brings some variety to my weekly ramblings of endless despondence. Come Away may have gotten disastrous reviews but it still squeezed out $108k from 475 theaters. It beat Fatman, the Mel Gibson evil Santa film that apparently had to exist in our realm of existence for some reason. That movie made $107,958 from 259 theaters. Seriously, you people still think cancel culture is real? Yikes. Below that was The Climb, a cycling comedy that opened last year at Cannes to great reviews but only brought in $103,572 from 408 locations. Tough times.

And right below that was arguably the most-hyped release of the week, Ammonite. Neon has this historical drama as their top Oscar player of the season. It's unlikely the movie will replicate the box office success of Parasite for many obvious reasons, but it's feasible that Ammonite could stay for the long haul, especially if competition continues to be non-existent. Whatever the case, commercial prowess isn't really a driving force for the 2021 Oscars in a way it may have typically been. Still, $85k from 280 theaters? It's fine.

Changes are happening all over the place with the domestic release schedule. Paramount removed two major completed titles from their slate: Tom Clancy's Without Remorse, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Bell, and Micronauts, Hasbro's feature adaptation of a toy line. The latter doesn't sound real, right? The former, however, could be picked up elsewhere, as Paramount has been offloading a lot of titles to streaming and there were rumors that Amazon was negotiating for exclusive at-home rights. The movie certainly would be at home on the platform of that awful Jack Ryan series.

You can check out the rest of the weekend box office here.

What films did you watch this weekend? Let us know in the comments.