The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 held on to the box office title for the third weekend in a row, but the real story was Michael Dougherty’s Krampus, which performed beyond all expectations, stuffing its stockings with $16 million. That was good enough for second place, beating out both Creed and The Good Dinosaur and proving once again that a well-timed genre film with an attention-grabbing concept doesn’t need an A-list cast or a big budget to deliver the goods. Elsewhere, Spectre rounded out the top 5 while the remaining films were essentially the same as last week although The Martian was finally knocked out of the top 10 in its tenth week.

1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 — $18.6M
2. Krampus — $16.02M
3. Creed — $15.54M
4. The Good Dinosaur — $15.51M
5. Spectre — $5.43M
6. The Night Before — $4.92M
7. The Peanuts Movie — $3.53M
8. Spotlight — $2.93M
9. Brooklyn — $2.43M
10. Secret in Their Eyes — $1.95M