Nothing too surprising here, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 topped the Thanksgiving weekend box office and Lionsgate will certainly be happy to see the 53.3% drop after what was looked at as a rather slow opening weekend. That’s on par with the second weekend of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and better than the 61.6% drop the first Hunger Games saw as the first part in the two-part finale has now grossed $480 million worldwide in its first two weekends.
As for the newcomers over the holidays it wasn’t exactly stellar for either the animated spin-off Penguins of Madagascar or the comedy sequel Horrible Bosses 2. The Penguins brought in $25.8 million over the weekend with a cume of $36 million since opening on Wednesday while Horrible Bosses 2 managed only $15.7 million over the three-day and $23 million over its first five days, which is $5 million less than the first film saw in only its first three. In my opinion this is merely a case of bad timing, as the “B+” CinemaScore seems about right, though the bad reviews couldn’t have helped.
Compared to last year, Thanksgiving weekend is down 21%, which has to do with the fact Catching Fire was merely pulling in more cash than Mockingjay and Frozen was crushing it in just its second weekend.
There were a couple of highlights for the weekend, however, as Focus’ The Theory of Everything expanded into 802 theaters and cracked the top ten with $5 million while Birdman and St. Vincent also found their way into the top ten despite actually losing theaters.
The Imitation Game opened in four theaters this weekend where it pulled in $482,000 for a $120,500 per theater average and Foxcatcher expanded into 72 theaters and made $1 million.
Next weekend sees the release of Fox’s new horror The Pyramid as the lone “wide” release as it doesn’t look like it will crack 600 theaters while Wild and Chris Rock‘s Top Five will stroll into limited theaters.
