Weekend Projections: Catching Fire Takes November Record
November 24, 2013
As expected, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire topped Delivery Man to win at the box office this weekend. OK, topped is perhaps an understatement when the gap between the two movies is about $150 million. Catching Fire will easily record the biggest November weekend of all time, topping The Twilight Saga: New Moon. It's also heading towards the 4th-biggest weekend of all time, per Lionsgate's Sunday estimate, although there's a good chance it'll end up just behind The Dark Knight Rises' $160.8 million from last year. It will definitely end behind Iron Man 3's $174 million from earlier this year, but continued big earnings for Catching Fire over Thanksgiving means that this year's box office championship race is about to get interesting.
The rest of the chart pales, of course, in the face of the Hunger Games phenomenon. The most notable performance in the top 10 is probably Free Birds declining only 34%, which takes its box office total close to $50 million. Needless to say, Relativity is looking forward eagerly the Thanksgiving holiday for that one, although it will have very direct competition from Frozen, which opened at the El Capitan Theater in Hollywood this weekend to a remarkable $237,000 from that one venue. (Remarkable if you've never seen the ticket prices at the El Capitan, at least.)
Two other films will top a $10,000 theater average. Weinstein's British-drama-for-awards-season, Philomena is set to open with about $130,000 from four venues for an average in the $33,000 range. Meanwhile, Nebraska continues its very promising early run with around $350,000 from 28 theaters.
Bruce Nash bruce.nash@the-numbers.com
Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Free Birds, Frozen, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Delivery Man, Nebraska, Philomena