‘Les Mis’ Tops Christmas Box Office (Corrected)

Corrected: Fixed typo in the spelling of Les Miserables throughout.

The epic musical “Les Miserables” came out ahead of all other films in this year's Christmas season, a typically profitable time for the film industry, grossing $18.2 million on Christmas Day alone, according to Box Office Mojo. Clearly, officials at Universal Pictures, which backed the epic movie, and other people attached to the “Les Mis” project are anything but unhappy now.

The Hugh Jackman, Russell Crow led film managed to gross even more than the highly anticipated Quentin Tarantino flick “Django Unchained.” Tarantino's $14.4 million opening is the highest start for any of the popular director’s previous films.

"Les Mis" is the work of director Tom Hooper (“The King’s Speech”); Entertainment Weekly reports that the tragic operatta’s box office performance is the second best Christmas opening, behind the 2009 gross for “Sherlock Holmes,” which earned $24.6 million and benefited from being a Friday release.

Despite its boffo results, “Les Mis” only achieved the fourth-best Christmas Day box office results ever. In first and second place are Avatar with $23.9 million on a Friday and Meet the Fockers with $19.5 million on a Saturday.

A 2012 Golden Globe nominee, "Les Mis" cost about $60 million to produce, so it nearly paid for a third of the costs in just one day. With a 73 percent freshness rating on Rotten Tomatoes and public interest, “Les Miserables” is almost guaranteed to turn a hefty profit.