In news surprising no one, “Mockingjay” stayed at the top of the box office. There wasn’t a lot of competition, an R-rated comedy sequel in “Horrible Bosses 2” and and increasingly milked franchise in “Penguins of Madagascar.” “Mockingjay” actually beat both combined and “Horrible Bosses 2” failed to beat out 2 films that have been out for a month now.
DreamWorks needs a change, their films aren’t doing as well as they once did and Penguins is no different, it was bolstered by a quarter of it’s sales coming form 3D and still opened below the other Madagascar movies by far. Animation can’t be blamed as “Big Hero 6” wasn’t far behind and it is in its fourth week. Impressively “Interstellar” was up in its fourth week, I guess people really want to spend 3 hours in a theater after spending Thanksgiving with family.
The lesson here is that people are finally starting to get tired of sequels for the sake of sequels. Listen up studios, the people are talking.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross | % Change | Total Gross | Week # | ||||||
| 1 | The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 | $56,972,599 | -53.3% | $225,680,904 | 2 | ||||||
| 2 | Penguins of Madagascar | $25,447,444 | – | $35,438,847 | 1 | ||||||
| 3 | Big Hero 6 | $18,816,798 | -6.5% | $167,219,558 | 4 | ||||||
| 4 | Interstellar | $15,743,005 | +2.6% | $147,035,482 | 4 | ||||||
| 5 | Horrible Bosses 2 | $15,457,418 | – | $22,771,243 | 1 | ||||||
A quick note on budgets and dollar figures:
Films making back their budgets is a good sign, but that is just the money to film. It doesn’t include distribution and marketing. Marketing can cost as much as a film. That big Superbowl spot is spendy. So take that into account when judging a films success. Hitting $100 million isn’t the same as it once was.
All dollar amounts in the top 5 come from estimates based on ticket sales unless noted otherwise. Occasionally this article will be published when actual results come out, which is usually late Monday afternoon. For more about this and other ins and outs of movie tracking click here.