Weekend Box Office Report: November 29- December 1 2013

By Kip Mooney • On • In News News 0

 

BOX OFFICE REPORT Nov. 29- Dec. 1, 2013(estimates from BoxOfficeMojo.com)

TOP 51. Catching Fire ($74.5 million)2. Frozen ($66.7 million)3. Thor: The Dark World ($11.1 million)4. Best Man Holiday ($8.4 million)5. Homefront ($6.9 million)

 

Catching Fire still burned strong over the Thanksgiving holiday. It made an astounding $74.5 million just Friday to Sunday. That's good enough for nearly $300 million since its release. That's faster than the original and almost as fast as The Avengers. It broke the Thanksgiving Day record with $14.9 million. And with only one wide release next weekend, it's a safe bet it will repeat again at No. 1 on its way to half a billion dollars domestic, which would be the best of the year.

Frozen came in second place, but that's still incredible. It earned $66.7 million over the weekend and $93 million since Wednesday. That's even better than its closest analog Tangled, which opened in 2010 with around $48 million. In fact, that's the best Thanksgiving debut for any movie ever.

Thor: The Dark World finally topped the original, making it second only to the Iron Man series among solo outings of The Avengers. The Best Man Holiday continued to do well, something you should expect until Christmas. Homefront finished in fifth place with a paltry $6.9 million.

Outside the top 5: - This Weekend's Indie Champ: Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, starring the great Idris Elba, who looks nothing like Nelson Mandela. The biopic, which got middling reviews, still earned $25,075 on each of its four screens.

- I was dead wrong about Black Nativity. The stellar cast couldn't overcome dreadful reviews and audience disinterest. It made just $5 million since opening Wednesday.

- That's still better than Spike Lee's unnecessary remake of Oldboy. The revenge thriller only made $1.2 million since Wednesday, making it another miss for Spike. To put this in perspective: it made less this weekend than Captain Phillips, which has been around for eight weeks.

Next week:The only new release is Out of the Furnace, starring Christian Bale and Casey Affleck. It looks reminiscent of Fight Club and Winter's Bone, which means it's all but impossible to market. This means it will probably flop until word-of-mouth gets around. I'm predicting only $10 million until that happens. Look for Catching Fire to repeat again at No. 1 with around $45 million, with Frozen not too far behind.

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About Kip Mooney

Kip Mooney
Like many film critics born during and after the 1980s, my hero is Roger Ebert. The man was already the best critic in the nation when he won the Pulitzer in 1975, but his indomitable spirit during and after his recent battle with cancer keeps me coming back to read not only his reviews but his insightful commentary on the everyday. But enough about a guy you know a lot about. I knew I was going to be a film critic—some would say a snob—in middle school, when I had to voraciously defend my position that The Royal Tenenbaums was only a million times better than Adam Sandler’s remake of Mr. Deeds. From then on, I would seek out Wes Anderson’s films and avoid Sandler’s like the plague. Still, I like to think of myself as a populist, and I’ll be just as likely to see the next superhero movie as the next Sundance sensation. The thing I most deplore in a movie is laziness. I’d much rather see movies with big ambitions try and fail than movies with no ambitions succeed at simply existing. I’m also a big advocate of fun-bad movies like The Room and most of Nicolas Cage’s work. In the past, I’ve written for The Dallas Morning News and the North Texas Daily, which I edited for a semester. I also contributed to Dallas-based Pegasus News, which in the circle of life, is now part of The Dallas Morning News, where I got my big break in 2007. Eventually, I’d love to write and talk about film full-time, but until that’s a viable career option, I work as an auditor for Wells Fargo. I hope to one day meet my hero, go to the Toronto International Film Festival, and compete on Jeopardy. Until then, I’m excited to share my love of film with you.

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