Catching Fire and Frozen Make Box Office Records
Oladunjoye Opeyemi
Holiday moviegoers remained ravenous for The Hunger Games: Catching Fire on Friday, putting the sequel on course to score one of the best second weekends in the history of the film business, not accounting for inflation.
The Lionsgate picture grossed $31.3 million from 4,163 theaters for a domestic total of $253.3 million and stunning global haul of $482.3 million. If views continue at this rate, Catching Fire is poised to gross $110 million-plus for the five-day Thanksgiving stretch (Wednesday-Sunday) and $75 million-plus for the weekend itself.
Disney’s 3D animated entry Frozen, opening Wednesday, also continued to soar, grossing $26.9 million from 3,742 locations for a three-day North American total of $53.5 million and projected five-day debut in the $93 million range.
Between them, Frozen and Catching Fire are serving up a record-breaking Thanksgiving. Frozen is poised to score the top holiday debut of all time, eclipsing the $80.1 million five-day debut of Pixar’s Toy Story 2 in 1999. It’s also destined to score the top opening for a Disney Animation Studios title, besting the $68.7 million debut of Tangled over Thanksgiving in 2010.
Catching Fire, now in its second weekend, will mark the top-grossing Thanksgiving film of any movie, topping previous record-holder Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone ($82.4 million). It also nabbed the best gross ever for Thanksgiving day — $14.9 million from 4,163 theaters — besting the $13.1 million earned by Toy Story 2.