December 10, 2013 by Vinnie Leduc
After torching the November opening record and then roasting the Thanksgiving record at the domestic box office, it seemed like the odds were ever in the favor of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire to join Lee Daniels’ The Butler and Gravity as the only movies to three-peat at the domestic box office this year. However, Disney’s hit 3D computer-animated musical Frozen iced Catching Fire, an honorable mention for one of our most anticipated movies of the year, over the weekend and even set a record for highest gross ever in the post-Thanksgiving weekend by topping Toy Story 2‘s $27.8 million sophomore weekend. During Thanksgiving weekend, Frozen had shattered Toy Story 2‘s turkey day opening record by almost $30 million.
Catching Fire is still tracking ahead of predecessor The Hunger Games and along with its international numbers has already made as much as the first sci-fi literary adaptation made in its entire run last year. Drama-thriller Out of the Furnace was a non-factor in its debut at third place with only $5.2 million against a reported $22 million budget. The star-studded bomb is just the latest to under-perform commercially, but there’s a chance it’ll go the way of dramedy Delivery Man, which had also opened poorly last month but has since managed to climb back into the black and crawl back into the top five.
Thor: The Dark World slipped to fourth in its fifth weekend and should cross the $200 million mark very soon. Gravity hit the $250 million milestone, and Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa became the sixth R-rated comedy this year to gross at least $100 million.
The upcoming weekend should be dominated by the release of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, the second film in Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings prequel trilogy, unless Tyler Perry pulls off the biggest upset of all time with the opening of A Madea Christmas. Here are the numbers for the top five over the weekend via BOM:
- Frozen — Weekend Gross: $31.6 million — Total Gross: $134.3 million (#2 last week)
- The Hunger Games: Catching Fire — Weekend Gross: $26.2 million — Total Gross: $335.9 million (new)
- Out of the Furnace — Weekend Gross: $5.2 million — Total Gross: $5.2 million (new)
- Thor: The Dark World — Weekend Gross: $4.8 million — Total Gross: $193.7 million (#3 last week)
- Delivery Man — Weekend Gross: $3.7 million — Total Gross: $24.8 million (#6 last week)
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