The overall box office fell quite a bit this weekend between the return to work post-Thanksgiving holiday, the beginning of the Christmas shopping season, the hold-off between the two holiday’s major releases and the absolutely freezing temperatures that dominated most of the nation, but things remained rosy for the top 2 films from last weekend. Frozen and The Hunger Games: Catching Fire flipped positions this week, with Frozen claiming number 1 with $31.6 million, the highest post-Thanksgiving weekend for a film since Toy Story 2 back in 1999. Catching Fire fell to second place with $27 million, a steep drop from the last two weekends but still a respectable number, considering that the film is well on its way to $400 million with $336 million so far (the third highest grossing film of the year).
The only other releases this weekend were on wildly different ends of the success spectrum. The Christian Bale/Casey Affleck/Woody Harrelson vehicle Out of the Furnace opened in third place to a paltry $5.8 million, fueled by so-so reviews, a low Cinemascore and an audience that’s more likely to see Bale in a few weeks in American Hustle. It’s on par with last year’s Killing Me Softly, which suggests that dark crime films aren’t the best for the post-Thanksgiving-pre-Christmas slot without a big name behind it. On the other end of the spectrum, the Coen brother’s new film Inside Llewyn Davis got its customary pre-wide-release awards run on 4 screens and made $401,000, a $100,250 per-screen average and an excellent showing. The reviews are largely ecstatic and while it’s hard to say if it will translate to a wide audience, it certainly has the awards buzz to get audiences out there when it opens wider from December 20th to January, as such Oscar films are wont to do.
Source: BoxOfficeMojo
