Looks like a lot of moviegoers traveled back to Middle Earth this weekend.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey enjoyed a strong opening weekend at the box office, topping all other movies with more than $84.7 million in domestic ticket sales, Deadline reports.

The Peter Jackson picture also grossed some $75 million internationally, bringing its worldwide total to more than $141 million.

The Hobbit’s first weekend earnings tops all previous three-day openings for the month of December. Will Smith’s 2007 blockbuster I Am Legend held the previous record with $77.2 million in ticket sales.

Rise of the Guardians and Lincoln came in at second and third place, grossing $7.4 million and $6.2 million, respectively.

Skyfall and Life of Pi round out the top five from this weekend’s box office.

According to Deadline, the Lord of the Rings prequel also broke a record overseas — in IMAX theaters — grossing an estimated $5 million in 126 IMAX locations.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey tells the epic tale of Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and his adventures involving Gandalf (Sir Ian McKellen) and Gollum (Andy Serkis). The film, based on J.R.R. Tolkien’s classic novel of the same name, will be followed by two more pictures: The Desolation of Smaug (December 2013) and There and Back Again (July 2014).

Did you catch ‘The Hobbit’ this weekend? What did you think of the LOTR prequel? Weigh in below.

Between tentpole blockbusters, limited releases and film festivals, hundreds of movies are released every year, often a dozen at a time. Friday almost invariably unleashes a whole new set of choices on moviegoers, who not only have to choose from these options, but remember what all of them are, while deflecting critical acclaim, marketing muscle, and of course just the business of their daily lives.

Five Flicks in Five Clicks is Celebuzz’ way of whittling down those choices to a comfortable number.

Launch the gallery above to see how Celebuzz is breaking down the week’s top films.

Be sure to check out each flick’s trailer in the playlist — below.

The Hobbit: An Unforgettable Journey

Skyfall

Life of Pi

Rise of the Guardians

Wreck-It Ralph

Which movie will you see this weekend, and why? Let us know in the comments below!

Brad Pitt proved to be no match for Kristen Stewart, James Bond and President Lincoln.

Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part 2, Skyfall and Lincoln held onto their box office perches for the third week in a row. Read on for how the rest of the weekend movies fared.

The fifth and final Twilight film stayed atop the box office for the third week in a row, earning $17.4 million. That brings its total domestic tally to $254.6 million, just one million shy of the biggest Twilight film: New Moon.

Skyfall came in at a close second, with $17 million. The 23^rd entry in the Bond franchise is not only the series’ highest-grossing film, its also the highest grossing spy movie ever in the U.S. Skyfall’s worldwide total currently stands at $869 million.

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln continued to show great legs at the box office. The film, which came in at No. 3 for the weekend with $13.5 million, has grossed nearly $84 million domestic. The bio-pic could easily hit the $100 million mark during the upcoming holiday frame.

3D holdovers Rise of the Guardians and Life of Pi came in fourth and fifth place, respectively. Guardians found $13.5 million in its second week in release, while director Ang Lee’s Pi grossed $12 million.

Killing Them Softly was the sole wide release this past weekend, bombing at No. 7 with a dismal $7 million. The film, which garnered a rare “F” CinemaScore rating from moviegoers, marks one of Brad Pitt’s worst opening weekends ever.

On a positive note, Ben Affleck’s Oscar-hopeful Argo reached the $100 million milestone at the box office this past weekend. This marks Affleck’s highest-grossing film as a director.

Which movie did you see this weekend? Discuss in the comments below. And did Killing Them Softly deserve its box office fate? Watch the trailer on Celebuzz and decide for yourself!

Twilight fans kept Breaking Dawn — Part 2 at the top of the box office for the second weekend in a row, leading to the biggest Thanksgiving weekend ever.

Daniel Craig’s Skyfall and Ang Lee’s Life of Pi also delivered big business.

How big? Read on…

The final film in the Twilight saga scored $43 million over the weekend, for a total of $64 million over the five-day holiday frame – enough to retain the number one spot for the second week in a row.

Breaking Dawn — Part 2, starring Kristen Stewart, has earned $200 million in the U.S. as of Monday, bringing its worldwide total to a franchise-high of $577 million.

In it’s third frame, Skyfall earned $34 million over the weekend, making the 23^rd James Bond film the first 007 picture to hit $200 million in the U.S. Directed by Sam Mendes, Skyfall’s current worldwide box office rests at an impressive $790 million.

Steven Spielberg’s Lincoln continued to show great legs at the U.S. box office, securing the No. 3 spot with $25 million. Dreamworks’ Rise of the Guardians, considered to be a major player at the Thanksgiving box office, came in at No. 4, with a less-than-expected take of $24 million.

Meanwhile, 20^th Century Fox’s adaptation of the novel Life of Pi exceeded expectations, scoring a fifth-place finish with $22 million in three days. The 3D film was expected to gross $20 million for the entire holiday period, a total it cleared in its first three days.  Currently, Pi’s five-day total sits at $30.2 million.

MGM’s long-delayed remake of Red Dawn opened at No. 7, with a 3-day tally of $14 million ($22 million over five days).

Next weekend finds Brad Pitt’s crime thriller, Killing Me Softly, competing with Team Edward and James Bond for box office supremacy.  Killing opens Friday, November 30.

Which movie did you check out over the holiday break? Tell Celebuzz all about it in the Comments, and watch our spoiler-tastic discussion of Breaking Dawn’s twist ending below!

If you’ve seen the trailer for Rise of the Guardians then you’ve seen a Santa that looks  like a Russian wrestler, an Easter Bunny who’s a dead-eye with a boomerang and human-hummingbird hybrid with a jones for baby teeth as they join together to fight an otherworldly force of evil.

No, this isn’t The Avengers for eight year olds. According to executive producer Guillermo Del Toro, Team Guardian got there first.

“When we started the movie, Avengers was not even a blip on the radar,” he told Celebuzz. “These movies take years to do.”

For Del Toro, this is his third time working in animation, the first being Kung Fu Panda 2 followed by Puss in Boots. He’s currently producing a digital remake of the classic Pinocchio and has Kung Fu Panda 3 waiting in the wings.

The director of hits like the Hellboy movies as well as the Oscar-nominated Pan’s Labyrinth, Del Toro took an active creative role working with first-time director Peter Ramsey on Guardians.

In the new movie, Jack Frost, voiced by Chris Pine, teams up with Santa (Alec Baldwin), the Easter Bunny (Hugh Jackman), the Tooth Fairy (Isla Fisher) and a non-verbal Sand Man. Their foe is Pitch (Jude Law), an evil force on a mission to snuff out children’s sense of wonder. As children stop believing, the life force of the guardians is drained away.

“The way Peter [Ramsey] saw it was like a superhero team coming together,” said Del Toro. “But he didn’t want to take the characters and give them super powers or anything like that. He wanted opposite personalities, grander than life, personalities clashing and coming together as the story goes along.”

Unlike most executive producers, Del Toro consulted on story, themes, characters and the look of the movie.

“The character that we took the most time designing was Bunny,” he said about the muscle-clad rabbit with a thick Australian accent. “He went through three or four incarnations than the one you see. We went with a bunny that has sort of baggy pants and a little vest and he was a little prissy. And there was another one where he was wearing leather and physically was very different, he was much more close to a real bunny.”

What the team finally decided on was to dispense with his clothing altogether and shape its fur coat as clothing, with markings like tattoos.

For a filmmaker known mainly for horror/fantasy, Del Toro seems to have a pretty strong knack for pleasing the kids. While Guardians favors a dark palette and often broaches  darker themes, he noted that most classic fairy tales traditionally do the same, but are often scrubbed clean for modern audiences.

“You can go and insinuate darkness and show darkness but ultimately it needs to stay on the tracks,” he concluded, warning, “any kind of helicopter parenting that tries to prevent moments like that is only creating an illusion for the way the world exists.”

Rise of the Guardians opens in theaters nationwide November 21. Watch the film’s theatrical trailer below.

Aside from eating foods people only really eat once a year, Thanksgiving is also the time to spend a day or two at the movies.

The holiday traditionally gives Hollywood one of its biggest weekends of the year, and this year’s holiday season is no exception. Several movies are jockeying for your attention at the box office, and Celebuzz has your guide to which films are playing at a theatre near you.

Chris Hemsworth‘s Red Dawn remake and Dreamworks’ animated movie Rise of the Guardians lead the charge of new releases this week, alongside new movies from Brad Pitt and director Ang Lee. 

With movies like Skyfall and Twilight: Breaking Dawn — Part 2 still doing strong business at the multiplex, it’s going to be Box Office Thunderdome as the new films compete with the holdovers. Thankfully there’s plenty of time over the break to catch a movie or three.

Check out our guide to ten noteworthy films Hollywood wants you to see this Thanksgiving. First, we roll out the new releases, along with their release dates, followed by recently-released films.

From James Bond to Team Edward, there’s something for everyone in theaters this week… Which movie will you see for the first or sixth time? Sound off in the comments below! And while you figure out which movie is worth your hard-earned allowance money, check out the trailer for the new release Red Dawn.