Box Office Top Five: Catching Fire and Frozen Lead Record-Breaking Thanksgiving Weekend
The Walt Disney Company
You thought you were just escaping your family and catching a flick over the holiday weekend, but you were actually MAKING HISTORY. The five-day nationwide box office total climbed to $294 million, setting an all-time Thanksgiving record. Thus we’re giving you the five-day grosses rather than the usual weekend tallies.
1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, $114.2 million (last week: no. 1; $300.6 million cumulative)
Now Catching Fire has the fourth-best opening of all time and the fourth-best second weekend of all time. (Wake up! Never forget that Hollywood stats are a vortex comparable to baseball stats!) Also exciting for Katniss & Friends: Catching Fire snatched Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone‘s 12-year-old five-day Thanksgiving-weekend record.
2. Frozen, $92.6 million (opening weekend)
The thing about Frozen kicking so much ass on the same weekend as The Hunger Games is that you get people excited about the prospect of female-led films. “Conventional wisdom is that the marketplace could never support more than one female-driven film, because while gals will see guy movies, it doesn’t work the other way. Well, it worked big time — both films crushed the five-day Thanksgiving domestic gross record — and it happened shortly after another female driven film, Gravity, crossed the $500 million mark in global gross,” Deadline writes. There’s also a note about how “if you give an audience a story well told, they will show up,” regardless of all this demographic-scheming sequel-and-remake–itis. We can only hope.
3. Thor: The Dark World, $15.6 million (last week: no. 2; $186.8 million cumulative)
Looks like the Marvel fans got in and got out with this one. It’s still making decent coin, but nothing compared to its $86 million opening only a few weeks ago.
4. The Best Man Holiday, $10.8 million (last week: no. 3; $63.1 million cumulative)
There are a ton of big releases coming this month, especially right at Christmastime, but I somehow wouldn’t be surprised to find this one chugging along in the top five straight through to early January.
5. Delivery Man, $9.6 million (last week: no. 4; $19.3 million)
On the one hand, staying in the top five is a good look. On the other hand, when you’re getting the dregs for a second week in a row, reminding everyone how embarrassing your opening weekend was, it might be better to vanish from sight.
Also notable: Spike Lee’s Oldboy remake earned an unimpressive $850,000 in 583 theaters, while the Idris Elba–starring Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom opened in just four theaters and made $100,000.
Filed Under: Box office
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