Weekend Box Office: Hungry for Seconds

As expected, ‘The Hunger Games’ repeated its box office victory for a second weekend over the Thanksgiving holiday. However, the film is still not living up to the success of its predecessor.

Mockingjay, Part 1‘ remained atop the charts even after dropping 53%, which is just about on par with the last installment (‘Catching Fire‘). The movie’s $56.8 million three-day weekend brought its ten-day domestic run up to $225.6 million. Overseas, ‘Mockingjay’ has earned $254.4 million, placing its worldwide total just $20 million away from the $500 million mark.

DreamWorks Animation suffered yet another blow with the debut of its new spin-off ‘Penguins of Madagascar‘. The $25.8 million ($36 million five-day total when you take into account Wednesday and Thursday) opening continues the studio’s downward trend of disappointments. To give those numbers some meaning, the prior ‘Madagascar’ movies respectively opened to $47.2 million, $63.1 million and $60.3 million. ‘Penguins’ isn’t off to a very good start.

With some of its thunder stolen away, ‘Big Hero 6‘ dropped to third place – but only after slipping a mere 6% in attendance. Its $18.7 million fourth weekend brings the film’s domestic run up to $167.2 million. Oddly, ‘Big Hero’ has yet to roll out the bulk of its international release.

Fourth place went to ‘Interstellar‘, which is also in its fourth week. Surprisingly, its take went up 3% in attendance by pulling in $15.8 million. To date, the space epic has grossed $147 million domestically and $395.2 million overseas.

Rounding out the Top 5 was the sequel ‘Horrible Bosses 2‘. Like ‘Penguins of Madagascar’, this franchise installment failed to live up to its series’ heights. The original ‘Horrible Bosses’ opened to $28.3 million, but the sequel was only able to earn slightly more than half that with $15.7 million ($23 million counting Wednesday and Thursday). I doubt we’ll see the trio back for a third.

As ‘The Theory of Everything‘ expanded to wide status, it climbed into the #7 spot with a very impressive $5 million from just 802 locations. As buzz for it continues, it’ll be fun to see how far the film can go.

Impressing even further was ‘The Imitation Game‘, which pulled in $482,000 on just four screens. The whopping $120,500 per-screen average is the second-best for 2014, only behind Wes Anderson’s ‘The Grand Budapest Hotel’.

Top 10:

1. ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1’ (Lionsgate) – $56,875,000

2. ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ (Fox) – $25,800,000

3. ‘Big Hero 6’ (Buena Vista) – $18,770,000

4. ‘Interstellar’ (Paramount) – $15,800,000

5. ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ (Warner Bros.) – $15,700,000

6. ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ (Universal) – $8,295,000

7. ‘The Theory of Everything’ (Focus) – $5,082,000

8. ‘Gone Girl’ (Fox) – $2,470,000

9. ‘Birdman’ (Fox Searchlight) – $1,880,000

10. ‘St. Vincent’ (Weinstein) – $1,773,000

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