The Imitation Game met with its wider release on Christmas day, fact which was rightly proven by a visible boost in box office reports. The favorite pictures of the holidays remained the 25 December released Unbroken and Into the Woods, joined by the last Hobbit, but the Alan Turing story appealed to many of those who have not had the opportunity to watch the movie at its initial release due to its airing in a limited number of theaters. That Morten Tyldum’s WWII tale reached a number seven position in the Christmas box office is a great increase in figures and positions.
Box office mojo shared the gross of the pictures during festive days and The Imitation Game scored a total of $3,077,000 on 25 December 2014 and positioned in the top ten list, followed by Ridley Scott’s Exodus: Gods and Kings (number 8), the longtime box office ruler The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (number 9) and Jean-Marc Vallée’s Wild (2014) on the tenth position. That the titles following the WWII drama scored less although were released in a greater number of theaters is a valid argument to prove that Alan Turing could have surpassed even the top five positions. For example, Exodus was aired in 3,002 theaters and gained $3,025,000, whereas The Imitation Game was aired in 747 theaters and gained more. Although the total cash difference for 25 December is almost unnoticeable, the number of theaters welcoming The Imitation Game was visibly lower (a difference of more than two thousand locations).
The Benedict Cumberbatch and Keira Knightley starring drama kept its number seven position in the box office of Friday, 26 December 2014 and the same number of theaters. The cash in of $2,889,000, on the other hand, is obviously lower than the one of the previous day, but the picture still managed to surpass Exodus and Wild (although The Hunger Games jumped to the fifth position).
Variety compared the fate of the Alan Turing picture with the box office strategy used by Weinstein Company in 2010 in the case of The King’s Speech. Back then, Tom Hooper’s biography drama was expanded from 91 to 700 locations on Christmas Day and thus increased the U.S. total from $4.2 million to $6.3 million in one single session. For The Imitation Game, the effect was visibly positive and the transition was made gradually (from 34 theaters on 24 December to 747 theaters on Christmas day). The strategy gave Morten Tyldum’s picture the chance to classify as the second best debut/ theater of 2014 with the sum of $120,500 per cinema.