Box Office Catch Up: 'Creed' Tops $165M Worldwide As 'The Martian' Crosses $600M Global

This is another installment of "Box Office Catch-Up," where I go look back at some older releases to see what happened after the first few weeks of release and/or if there were any surprises here or abroad.

While I was paying attention to everything else, Ridley Scott's The Martian soared past the $600 million mark at the worldwide box office. That makes it Matt Damon's biggest domestic hit ever ($228m, just past The Bourne Ultimatum) and his second-biggest global hit behind the $675m-grossing Interstellar (that Chris Nolan film earned $189m in America). If you want to play the inflation game, it's sixth in terms of estimated tickets sold and what-have-you. It's also the biggest domestic/global hit ever for director Ridley Scott. It is easily the biggest grosser among this year's Oscar contenders, save the five technical awards for which Star Wars: The Force Awakens is up for. Of course, whether or not it actually wins anything this year is open for debate, but it's a massive hit having earned $605m worldwide thus far, or 5.6x its $108m production budget.

Also of note, Ryan Coogler's Creed now sits with $167.5 million after a halfway decent overseas run on top of its $108m domestic run. In a milestone rife for commentary when it actually happens, the Michael B. Jordan boxing drama and Rocky sequel is about $450k away from surpassing the $167.9m worldwide gross of Fantastic Four. Couple that with The Intern ($194m worldwide on a $35m budget) being Warner Bros./ Time Warner Inc.'s third-biggest grosser of 2014 (behind San Andreas, Mad Max and ahead of Jupiter Ascending and Creed) and Warner Bros.' much-discussed 2015 slate is a strong case for "what actually makes money versus what we assume will make money." I've been waiting for weeks for Creed top top Fantastic Four and I really should spend the week prepping for the occasion.

Quentin Tarantino's The Hateful Eight is not a mega smash, but isn't a super-flop either. The three-hour hyper-violent western drama now sits with $117 million worldwide. That's obviously way below the likes of Inglorious Basterds and Django Unchained, but it cost a lot less than those films. Depending on who you ask, the film either cost $62m or $44m to produce, so that obviously affects just how much the film needs to earn in post-theatrical to weather the relative consumer disinterest compared to his last few outings. The film was explicitly less commercial than Tarantino's last few outings, and The Revenant was brutal competition, going for the same demos with a genuine mega-star top-lining the picture.

Speaking of which, The Revenant should top $150 million domestic today, with $324m worldwide thus far on a $135m budget. So there's that. Universal/ Comcast Corp.'s early Christmas treat Krampus went the distance and then some, earning $61m worldwide on a $15m budget. At $42m domestic, it's the fourth-biggest Christmas grosser actually released in December, behind National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation ($72m), Tyler Perry's A Madea Christmas ($53m), and The Preacher's Wife ($48m in 1996). Universal's #YouCanSeeThemBoth Star Wars counter-programming worked like a charm, as the Tina Fey/Amy Poehler comedy Sisters has now earned $101m worldwide, including $86m domestic, on a $30m budget.

Fox's The Force Awakens counter-punch, Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip, earned $171 million worldwide but with a $90m budget. That's just over half of the $342m that Chip-Wrecked pulled in on the same weekend back in 2011, and it appears that this franchise may not make it to part 5. I was wrong to presume it would thrive against Star Wars, but I'm not sure what other option they had considering the deluge of animated fare dropping in 2016. Also existing in that weird "not a flop, but not a hit" purgatory is Jennifer Lawrence's Joy. The 20th Century Fox release has earned $97.7m worldwide on a $60m budget, but we're still talking about a female-led character drama that wouldn't have earned $1.25 without Jennifer Lawrence pulling her weight as a movie star.

Outright perishing under the weight of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was Ron Howard's In the Heart of the Sea ($90 million on a $100m budget), Will Smith's Concussion ($35.9m worldwide, just above The Legend of Bagger Vance as his worst-performing star vehicle), and Warner Bros.'s Point Break remake ($122m on a $105m budget). The tragedy is that despite (for example) Warner taking a bath with Pan ($126m on a $150m budget) and Point Break while scoring relatively solid smash hits with Creed and The Intern, Hollywood at-large will still continue to churn out more like Pan while viewing The Intern as a risk.

In the realm of mega-smashes that nobody noticed, Daddy's Home has earned $221 million worldwide on a $50m budget. I'll go into that one on a later, but it's proof positive that the star system is alive-and-well under the right circumstances.  Going back a bit, The Peanuts Movie earned $244 million on a $99m budget. It might be a franchise if it does well enough in post-theatrical, and it shockingly out-grossed Pixar's The Good Dinosaur in America ($130m vs. $125m), but it's not a breakout that we might have been expecting. But then, neither was The Good Dinosaur which sits with $294m worldwide. Spectre earned $877m worldwide, but I covered that a couple weeks ago, and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part 2 earning "just" $652m worldwide (4x its $160m budget) was enough to send Lionsgate's stock crashing. That's why I kinda hate the stock market.

Sony's The Night Before legged it domestically for a $42 million total off a $9.8m debut, but it didn't make much overseas and thus sits with $52m on a $25m budget. Victor Frankenstein earned just $34m worldwide on a $40m budget while Crimson Peak earned $74m on a $55m budget, but guess which one Hollywood is more likely to greenlight next time out? In better news for horror, Sony's Goosebumps has earned $141m on a $58m budget, potentially justifying a sequel if post-theatrical does well.

Steven Spielberg's Bridge of Spies earned 4x its $40 million budget worldwide ($162m) for Walt Disney and DreamWorks SKG while earning a Best Picture nomination, thus making it less likely that Spielberg's next "serious" project will be in theaters rather than on HBO or Netflix. Finally, Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension may have been a tragic victim of an early-VOD experiment, but it still earned $78m worldwide on a $10m budget for Paramount/Viacom Inc. And while Vin Diesel may be crazy-like-a-fox-enough to get investment/distribution for his pet projects, he may be able to justify at it on a more reasonable budget. The Last Witch Hunter made $140m worldwide, including $113m overseas, which would have been great had the film not cost $90m to produce.