While we were all talking about Creed and The Good Dinosaur, a Hunger Games film was the top film of Thanksgiving for a third and final time. Mockingjay Part 2, the Jennifer Lawrence action sequel, earned $75.75 million over the Wednesday to Sunday holiday, including a $51.6m Friday to Sunday frame. That’s a weekend-to-weekend drop of 50%, which is slightly less than the 53% drop of Mockingjay Part 1 and Catching Fire. The Lions Gate Entertainment release has earned $198.3m domestic thus far (compared to $225m for the previous film at the end of this weekend) and has earned over $440.7m worldwide (compared to $474m for the previous film at this juncture).
It’s earned $15.1 million this far domestically in IMAX alone. So yeah, it may “only” make around $295m domestic, and it may make less worldwide than the previous two sequels (although it might crawl to $700m worldwide), but it’s still a huge hit. More importantly, Lionsgate was 100% correct to split the last book into two movies. They made significantly more money on two films than they would have with a single Mockingjay movie.
Spectre made $12.8 million on its fourth weekend to bring its cume to $176.1m. As noted yesterday, that surpasses the domestic totals of Quantum of Solace ($168m) and Casino Royale ($167m). That means it’s the second biggest 007 movie ever in America not adjusted for inflation. It’s obviously still trailing Skyfall, but that film’s insane $304m domestic cume was always a pipe dream. The film dropped just 15% this weekend, which is much smaller than the Thanksgiving weekend drops for the last three Daniel Craig 007 films: Casino Royale fell 24% in its second weekend, while Quantum of Solace and Skyfall dropped 29% and 13% respectively on their third weekends.
It’s still playing like a film that gets to around $215m in the end. The only variable is whether or not Creed takes away the older audiences for the next three weeks. Worldwide, it has topped $750m, including $50m in IMAX alone (Skyfall made $64m in IMAX back in 2012/2013). 007 is alive and well, and now it’s just a matter of what EON Productions and MGM decide to do for the next romp.
The Peanuts Movie made $9.7 million (-27%) in its third weekend, with a hold naturally buffeted by the holiday weekend. You’re finally acting like a kid-friendly animated feature, Charlie Brown! The film made around $13.5m for the holiday, which brought its cume to $116.76m, and its overseas fate is mostly unknown until next month. It’s no smash, but we may still get Why Are Those Characters From Ice Age In Your Sequel, Charlie Brown? in a few years. Yes, I’m having way too much fun coming up with dumb Peanuts Movie sequel names.
- Forbes