The Hunger Games: Catching Fire dropped just 52.5% from its spectacular fourth-best-all-time debut and Disney’s Frozen earned a potent $66.7 over the three-day weekend as Hollywood enjoyed its highest-grossing Thanksgiving ever. Catching Fire earned an estimated $110.2 million over the five-day Turkey Day weekend as it became the top Thanksgiving title of all time, easily eclipsing the $82.4 million total of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. As for the three-day weekend--led by Catching Fire and Frozen the box office total was up 80% from the same weekend last year when Breaking Dawn Part 2 led the box office for the third straight weekend with $17.4 million.Catching Fire’s $74.5 million total for the 3-day weekend also ranks as the fourth best second weekend all time, trailing just The Avengers ($103.1 million, Avatar $75.6 million, and The Dark Knight ($75.2 million). In just 10 days Catching Fire has earned $296.5 million here in North America, which is well ahead of the first Hunger Games movie’s 10-day total of $248.5 million, and represents a considerable widening of the gap between the two films, which was just about $6 million after their debut weekends. Is Catching Fire’s increasing sales velocity just the result of the expanded movie-going opportunities afforded by the Thanksgiving week (the first Hunger Games film was released in March) or will the second film in the series end up posting a big increase over the first film?
It may be too early to tell on the domestic side, but overseas Catching Fire has now earned $276.5 million, just shy of the $283.2 million total that the original Hunger Games movie earned during its entire overseas run, and should end up (like many of 2013’s sequels) with a healthy boost in overseas sales.
| Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): November 29 - December 1, 2013 | ||||||
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| Film | Weekend Gross | Screens | Avg./ Screen | Total Gross | Wk# |
| 1 | The Hunger Games: Catching Fire | $74,500,000 | 4,163 | $17,896 | $296,500,000 | 2 |
| 2 | Frozen | $66,713,000 | 3,742 | $17,828 | $93,356,000 | 2 |
| 3 | Thor: The Dark World | $11,108,000 | 3,286 | $3,380 | $186,712,000 | 4 |
| 4 | The Best Man Holiday | $8,491,000 | 1,717 | $4,945 | $63,414,000 | 3 |
| 5 | Homefront | $6,970,000 | 2,570 | $2,712 | $9,795,000 | 1 |
| 6 | Delivery Man | $6,931,000 | 3,036 | $2,283 | $19,453,000 | 2 |
| 7 | The Book Thief | $4,850,000 | 1,234 | $3,930 | $7,856,000 | 4 |
| 8 | Black Nativity | $3,880,000 | 1,516 | $2,559 | $5,000,000 | 1 |
| 9 | Philomena | $3,789,000 | 835 | $4,538 | $4,754,000 | 2 |
| 10 | Last Vegas | $2,785,000 | 1,854 | $1,502 | $58,722,000 | 5 |
Disney’s animated epic Frozen, which like Catching Fire features a determined and resourceful heroine, debuted on Wednesday and earned $93.3 million, easily surpassing the previous record set by Pixar’s Toy Story 2, which earned $80.1 million when it debut over the 5-day Thanksgiving perioed in 1999 (of course given ticket price inflation, Toy Story 2 sold more tickets). Frozen, which was adapted from Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, earned the top "A+" CinemaScore, which means that it should be in theaters for quite a while.
Slipping to third place in its fourth weekend in theaters Marvel Studios’ Thor: The Dark World clearly benefited from a new round of TV ads as it saw its three-day total slide just 21.8% while it earned $11.1 million. The Thor sequel’s 5-day total was a very respectable $15.5 million as it brought its domestic total to $186.7 million, which surpasses the first Thor’s full-run total of $181 million in 2011.
It appears likely that The Dark World will end up will end up breaking the $200 million barrier, but its domestic increase over the first Thor film will be dwarfed by what happened overseas where The Dark World has already earned $404. 4 million (68.4% of its worldwide total of $591.1 million) versus just $268.3 million for the first film, which earned $449.3 million for its entire worldwide run.
Fourth place went to the urban comedy The Best Man Holiday, which was written and directed by Malcom D. Lee. The sequel to 1998’s The Best Man dropped just 32% as it brought its 3-week total to $63.4 million, which means that this $17 million film is already solidly in the black.
The Jason Statham action thriller Homefront opened weakly in fifth place with an estimated $9.7 million from 2,570 locations. Produced for just $22 million, Homefront, which earned a mediocre "B" CinemaScore, will still have to do some fancy stepping to make its cost back in theaters.
Another film with dubious financial prospects is the Vince Vaughan comedy/drama Delivery Man, which enjoyed a good hold, dropping just 13% in its second weekend, but still faces an uphill climb to make back its $26 million cost.
The next three spots on the chart all belong to movies with Oscar pretensions. Fox’s Nazi period drama The Book Thief managed to make it to the seventh spot as it added 1164 theaters to bring its total to 1,234. This adaptation of Markus Zusak’s novel brought in $4.85 million to bring its domestic total to $7.9 million.
Eighth place went to Black Nativity, a musical loosely based on Langston Hughes’ play. Directed by Kasi Lemmons , Black Nativity stars Forest Whitaker, Angela Bassett, Mary J. Blige, and Tyrese Gibson. Targeted at a faith based audience, Black Nativity earned a solid "A-" CinemaScore, as it brought in nearly $5 million during its debut weekend.
The Weinstein Company’s Philomena, which stars Judi Dench as an Irish nurse who travels to the U.S. to track down a long lost son who was "sold" to an American couple by the nuns at an Irish foundling home, expanded from 4 theaters to 835 as it earned an estimated $4.7 million while posting a solid $4,538 per venue average.
In contrast Spike Lee’s remake of the Korean cult classic Old Boy, which opened in 583 theaters, earned just $1.2 million for a poor per-venue average of just $1,458. It is very early, but it appears that Lee’s film will have to do some serious damage on disc to make back its $30 million cost.
Check back here next week to see if the animated feature Khumba, the sci-fi horror film The Last Days of Mars, the art/action thriller Out of the Furnace starring Christian Bale, Casey Affleck, and Woody Harrelson, or Inside Llewyn Davis, the new Coen brother’s film about the folk music scene of the early 1960s, can make an impression on the box office.
