Weekend Box Office: ‘Mockingjay’ Still Flying

Without a single new wide release, this post-Thanksgiving weekend was a bust at the box office, just as everyone expected. In fact, it was one of the worst of the year. Like Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, it’ll go down in history.

Even after falling 62%, ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1‘ remained in the top spot for the third consecutive weekend. The third entry in the franchise grossed another $21.6 million, bringing its 17-day domestic total up to $257.7 million. At this point, the film is poised to close near the $330 million mark. ‘Mockingjay’ also remained atop the charts overseas, where it has now earned $302.8 million, making its worldwide total $560.5 million.

In its sophomore weekend, ‘Penguins of Madagascar‘ remained in second place. Off 56% from its debut (which is quite a steep decline in attendance for a kids’ movie), the spin-off only added $11.1 million to its domestic run, which now sits at $49.5 million. Internationally, it has pulled in $93.8 million, but things still don’t look great for this $132 million animated feature.

Horrible Bosses 2‘ climbed up from fifth to third place in its second weekend. Comedies usually drop steeply, but ‘Bosses’ only fell 44%, which is especially light given this awful weekend. It grabbed another $8.6 million, and its domestic run is now up to $36 million, but that’s still just a fraction of what the original ‘Horrible Bosses‘ pulled in at this point.

The fourth and fifth place movies, ‘Big Hero 6‘ and ‘Interstellar‘, both took their heaviest hits after being on the big screen for five weeks. ‘Big Hero’ dropped a whopping 57% and ‘Interstellar’ fell 49%. The $8.1 million for ‘Big Hero’ pushed its domestic numbers up to $177.5 million, while ‘Interstellar’ pulled in $8 million and raised its run up to $158.6 million. ‘Big Hero’ has only grossed $62.8 million from its very slowly expanding international release, but ‘Interstellar’ has grossed $434.4 million internationally and will cross the worldwide $600 million threshold during the coming week.

Fox’s 589 screen release of ‘The Pyramid‘ performed lightly, which is just what the studio expected and the reason why it didn’t get a wide release. Made for $5.1 million, the barely advertised horror flick only drew $1.3 million.

Limited release Oscar contender ‘Wild‘ failed to open as strongly as expected. It appears that moviegoers thought the film looked like a female version of Sean Penn’s ‘Into the Wild‘ and didn’t take the bait. From 21 locations, the Fox Searchlight drama pulled in $630,000 for a per-screen average of $30,000. While those numbers are good, they’re certainly not as good as the studio hoped.

Weekend estimates have yet to be released for ‘Pioneer’ or ‘Life Partners’.

Top 10:

1. ‘The Hunger Games: Mockingjay, Part 1’ (Lionsgate) – $21,600,000

2. ‘Penguins of Madagascar’ (Fox) – $11,100,000

3. ‘Horrible Bosses 2’ (Warner Bros.) – $8,600,000

4. ‘Big Hero 6’ (Buena Vista) – $8,130,000

5. ‘Interstellar’ (Paramount) – $8,000,000

6. ‘Dumb and Dumber To’ (Universal) – $4,169,000

7. ‘The Theory of Everything’ (Focus) – $2,668,000

8. ‘Gone Girl’ (Fox) – $1,500,000

9. ‘The Pyramid’ (Fox) – $1,350,000

10. ‘Birdman’ (Fox Searchlight) – $1,150,000

1 comment

  1. William Henley

    Went and saw Theory of Everything this weekend, and it included a trailer for Wild. Wild looked boring to me. Theory of Everything was fantastic!

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