Box Office Weekend: Mockingjay Remains Top Flyer

Leave it to two birds to soar high at the box office over a handful of turkeys this Thanksgiving weekend. In only its second week, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is already the seventh highest grossing domestic film of the year, and while its estimated $56.9 million is well below its $121.9 million opening weekend (which is almost as much as it cost to make, it has been revealed), it is still likely to make much more, and it still stood well above any other film, new and otherwise. Penguins of Madagascar, the latest new release to not release budget numbers, may have made a wise decision as its estimated $25.8 million is not exactly a sterling start, despite decent critical praise, while below it Big Hero 6 picked up an estimated $18.8 million (and broke even domestically) and Interstellar gained an estimated $15.8 million (not yet successful here, but incredibly successful worldwide) and continue their respective juggernaut performances at the box office.

Horrible Bosses 2 may have arrived a few years too late, as it opened to an estimated $15.7 million weekend, receiving critical panning and unlikely to replicate the extraordinary success of the previous film. The same could be said of Dumb and Dumber To, which is a bit more successful with an estimated $8.3 million and $72.2 million in gross, but far and away from the $100 million plus finish of the 1994 original. Meanwhile, The Theory of Everything is one of two films to go up in revenue, the Stephen Hawking biopic earning an estimated $5.1 million (the only other is Birdman, whose estimated $1.9 million represented a slight uptick and near break even weekend take for the independent film).

Finally, Gone Girl, once the top draw at the box office, fell behind Big Hero 6 and The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 in total domestic revenue, but even at an estimated $2.5 million in its ninth week it is still a huge success. While St. Vincent and its estimated $1.8 million (and $39.3 million in total revenue) still has not reported a budget, leaving it still a question mark if it has done about as well as the Weinstein Company hoped it would.

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Seth Paul

When not failing to write novels and screenplays, box-office guru Seth writes humorous comedy tracks for films under the name "The One Man Band" that can be found at Rifftrax.com. Although, he has recently succeeded in writing the novella "Jack Alan and the Case of the Not-Exactly Rocket Scientists," available as an eBook on Amazon. He is also the English voice of Zak in "Zak McKracken: Between Time and Space."

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