Weekend box office: Horrible Bosses 2 and Penguins of Madagascar struggle

Brad Sturdivant November 30th, 2014

The Thanksgiving weekend clearly belonged to THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 1 as the film managed to almost double the next highest film’s totals at the weekend box office. I’m not so sure that fact is so much a testament to Mockingjay’s power or more of a statement to the how much the opening films underperformed. It’s never a good sign when a sequel can’t beat the original’s opening number, so the fact that HORRIBLE BOSSES 2 missed its predecessor’s numbers by almost $5 million is not a good sign, and that’s only if you take the film’s totals since Thanksgiving. The comparison for PENGUINS OF MADAGASCAR is harder to judge since the film is a spinoff and not a true sequel, but the original MADAGASCAR is the worst performing of the three and even it pulled in $47 million on its opening weekend. Penguins couldn’t even get $40 million since Thanksgiving. All in all, another disappointing box office result in what’s shaping up to be a disappointing year for movies.

Next week is a little bit of a black hole in terms of opening movies, with the only film of note opening up is the Reese Witherspoon Oscar hopeful WILD. Most studios are smart and decide not to open a film the weekend after the Thanksgiving weekend, but in this case, I think they would have been fine since none of the Thanksgiving movies did anything. So it looks like THE HUNGER GAMES: MOCKINGJAY – PART 1 will easily make it three in a row. Note: the numbers below are for the three day weekend and will be updated as they become final.

1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 $56.8m

2. Penguins of Madagascar $25.8m

3. Big Hero 6 $18.7m

4. Interstellar $15.8m

5. Horrible Bosses 2 $15.7m

6. Dumb and Dumber To $8.3m

7. Theory of Everything $5m

8. Gone Girl $2.4m

9. Beyond the Lights $1.8m

10. Birdman $1.7m

(Deadline)