A movie about black female mathematicians just beat 'Star Wars' to become the top film in America

By Isha Aran | January 9, 2017 | 6:59pm

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Hidden Figures may not have won any Golden Globes last night (and it may have been subject to a very embarrassing flub on Jenna Bush’s part), but it did win big at the box office this weekend. The film made $22.8 million this weekend, surpassing Rogue One: A Star Wars Story by about a million dollars, and becoming the number one movie in America! Not only that, it won even though it was playing on nearly 2,000 fewer screens than its rival.

The biographical film, which stars Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, and Janelle Monae, tells the story of the black female mathematicians and physicists who worked for NASA in the 1960s and were an integral part of John Glenn’s history-making orbit of Earth. The film picked up two Golden Globe nominations for Best Supporting Actress and Best Original Score and was projected to make between $16 and $18 million at the box office this weekend.

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But women came through! According to Variety, they comprised 64% of the audience this weekend, and Hidden Figures cut what would have been Rogue One’s four weekend stretch at the top of the box office a little short. To anyone who has written off the lack of movies about women of color due to things like market viability and lethargic ticket sales, this one’s for you! (See also: Moana.) Hopefully the success of Hidden Figures will continue to break down the barriers that keep stories like this, which are just as important as any other (and honestly more important than the Bourne reboots put together), from being told.