Box Office: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Victorious Thanksgiving Weekend With $51.6 Million

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Thanksgiving. A day to give thanks to friends and family. A day to storm the malls at midnight for Black Friday, eh, I mean right after you finish dinner, because tradition takes a backseat to the all mighty dollar. Just as stores have been inclined to inch up Black Friday doorbusters to occur on Thanksgiving Day, Hollywood has also found favor with the holiday in having family friendly titles or previous weekend No. 1’s holding steady.

Since 2010, Thanksgiving has been dominated by franchise movies, be it Harry Potter, Twilight or The Hunger Games. This year was no different as The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 maintained his No. 1 spot by earning an estimated $51.6 million Friday through Sunday. That’s a 50% drop in attendance from its $101 million opening one week ago. Worldwide the film has accumulated earnings of $440 million.

In 2015, Pixar did something it has never done before. The animation giant released two films in the same calendar year. Over the summer we had the mega hit Inside Out. Now they give us The Good Dinosaur. Considering the number of Ice Age movies there have been, not to mention the mega successful Jurassic World, a $39 million weekend seems small, and it is for a Pixar movie. This total places it 13th out of 14 Pixar titles for opening weekends in major release (both Toy Story 2 and A Bug’s Life played at single locations before national expansion in succeeding weeks). Now this is just from Friday through Sunday; it doesn’t take into account figures from Wednesday and Thursday.

The Rocky revival was in full effect as Creed opened strong to finish in third place with $30 million. Now myself and Scott Sawitz may disagree ratings wise, where I call it the “best Rocky since Rocky” and he found it a “mediocre Rocky sequel at best, most audiences (and critics) seemed to like it. We shall see how it performs in the upcoming weeks with the likes of Krampus, Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea, another Alvin and the Chipmunks movie (really?), and potential Oscar bait films (Concussion, Joy) open nationwide.

Spectre looks like it’ll have enough to make it to $200 million in the United States, which is disappointing, but it is playing to Europe and Asia market having amassed more than $570 million overseas.

Elsewhere, the American remake of the Argentinean thriller The Secret in Their Eyes looks to be a bust for STX after starting strong earlier this year with the sleeper hit The Gift. TSITE has only made $14 million in two weeks.

The same week that Fox’s The Martian celebrates its ninth and most likely final week in the top 10, Fox Searchlight’s Brooklyn enters jumps three places to finish in the ninth position thanks to expanding from 115 to 845 locations. It finished the weekend with $3.8 million. Maintaining consistency is the newspaper drama Spotlight as it retains its No. 8 spot and actually saw its viewership increase by 27.4% as it plays at 897 locations.

The biggest disappointment for new titles has to be Victor Frankenstein headlined by James McAvoy and Daniel Radcliffe. The Fox release opened on 2,797 screens but only made $2.35 million.

In limited release, Focus Features debuted The Danish Girl on four screens to finish with $185k, while the Janis Joplin documentary Janis: Little Girl Blue opened on two screens and made $24k.

This weekend upcoming we have the Christmas-themed horror comedy Krampus. In my region we have yet to receive invites for a critic’s screening so perhaps Universal doesn’t want us to see it? Or maybe they have a bias against movies featuring Adam Scott and David Koechner.

Look for Mockingjay to repeat with strong holds by The Good Dinosaur and Creed.

Top 10 below.

01. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 – $51.6 Million ($198.3m)
02. The Good Dinosaur – $39.1 Million ($55.5m)
03. Creed – $30.1 Million ($42.6m)
04. Spectre – $12.8 Million ($176m)
05. The Peanuts Movie – $9.7 Million ($116.75m)
06. The Night Before – $8.2 Million ($24.1m)
07. The Secret in Their Eyes – $4.5 Million ($14m)
08. Spotlight – $4.5 Million ($12.3m)
09. Brooklyn – $3.83 Million ($7.3m)
10. The Martian – $3.3 Million ($218.6m)

Travis Leamons is one of the Inside Pulse Originals and currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Inside Pulse Movies. He's told that the position is his until he's dead or if "The Boss" can find somebody better. I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!