Box Office: The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 Tops For Third Straight Weekend

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Box office estimates have The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 taking the weekend with $18.6 million. That was good enough for the last installment of Suzanne Collins’s dystopian YA series to repeat on top three weeks in a row. In 17 days it has raked in $227 million compared to the $258 million Mockingjay – Part 1 made its first 17 days of release one year ago. For this being a finale you would think it would end on a high note, just like The Lord or the Rings or Harry Potter franchise. Heck, even the last Twilight was met with better fanfare. Granted it wasn’t by much (Breaking Dawn – Part 2 made about $12 million more overall compared to the first part).

Opening in second place was the Christmas horror-comedy Krampus from writer-director Michael Dougherty. Dougherty, who also made the Halloween-themed anthology movie Trick ‘r Treat, seems to have a knack for horror comedies and there certainly was an audience for the dark side of Christmas. The Universal release made $16 million from 2,902 locations with a per-screen average of $5,520, the best of any release in the top 10.

Third place was a dead heat between Creed and The Good Dinosaur as only a few thousand dollars separated the two. The Rocky spin-off finished with $15.54 million while Pixar’s latest took a bit of a hit the weekend following Thanksgiving losing 60% of its audience to finish with $15.51 million.

Other notes at the box office. The Seth Rogen-Joseph Gordon-Levitt Christmas comedy The Night Before is holding steady three weeks into its run with $31.9 million overall, while the heavily touted cast of The Secret in Their Eyes (with Julia Roberts, Nicole Kidman and Chiwetel Ejiofor) narrowly made the top 10 with $1.95 million. It has made only $17.2 million in 17 days.

Sure-to-be Oscar contenders Spotlight and Brookyln take places No. 8 and No. 9 with $2.9 million and $2.4 million, respectively.

In limited release, Amazon and Roadside Attractions opened Spike Lee’s Chi-Raq at 305 locations where it made $1.25 million overall. Fox Searchlight debuted Youth at four locations to $80k, and the Weinstein Company dropped the latest adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Macbeth (starring Michael Fassbender and Marion Cotillard) at five locations where it made $67,868.

Upcoming we have Ron Howard’s In the Heart of the Sea starring Chris Hemsworth. Methinks this will win out the weekend, even though Howard’s films of late tend to have openings in the range of $10 to $18 million. But with a bunch of box office holdovers and no other major wide debuts, the tale that inspired Herman Mellville’s Moby-Dick should be the film that finally supplants The Hunger Games.

Top 10 results below.

01. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2 – $18.6 Million ($227.1m)
02. Krampus – $16 Million
03. Creed – $15.54 Million ($65.1m)
04. The Good Dinosaur – $15.51 Million ($75.9m)
05. Spectre – $5.4 Million ($184.5m)
06. The Night Before – $4.9 Million ($31.9m)
07. The Peanuts Movie – $3.5 Million ($121.4m)
08. Spotlight – $2.9 Million ($16.6m)
09. Brooklyn – $2.4 Million ($11.2m)
10. The Secret in Their Eyes – $1.95 Million ($17.2m)

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!