Hollywood enjoys its most prosperous Thanksgiving on record as holdover The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Disney’s new animated tentpole Frozen each earn more than any previous holiday title.
Hollywood enjoyed its most prosperous Thanksgiving on record as holdover The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Disney’s new animated tentpole Frozen each earned more than any previous holiday title.
Lionsgate’s Catching Fire grossed $110.2 million over the five-day holiday (Wednesday-Sunday), becoming the top Thanksgiving title of all time, according to a report by The Hollywood Reporter. The previous film to hold that record was Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which made $82.4 million for its debut. For the weekend itself, the sequel took in $74.5 million -- the fourth-best second weekend in history after The Avengers($103.1 million), Avatar ($75.6 million) and The Dark Knight($75.2 million).
Catching Fire has now earned $296.5 million domestically. Overseas the title, which cost $130 million to produce, took in another $92.5 million for an international total of $276.5 million and a massive global haul of $573 million.
Disney's Frozen, opening Wednesday, scored the top Thanksgiving debut of all time with a five-day gross of $93 million, eclipsing the $80.1 million five-day launch of Pixar's Toy Story 2 in 1999. It also scored the top opening for a Disney Animation Studios title, beating out the $68.7 million gross taken by Tangled over Thanksgiving in 2010. For the three-day weekend, Frozen took in $74.5 million.
Loosely based on Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale The Snow Queen, Frozen tells the story of a fearless princess (Kristen Bell) who sets off on an epic journey to find her sister, whose icy powers have caused an eternal winter. Last weekend, the 3Dpic, which cost $150 million to make, reportedly did big business when it played exclusively at Disney's El Capitan Theatre in Hollywood. Overseas, Frozen earned $16.7 million as it began rolling out in a handful of markets for a worldwide debut of $109.7 million.
Led in large part by Frozen and Catching Fire, domestic box office revenue for the five-day holiday clocked in at roughly $294 million, up nearly three percent from last year's record $291 million.
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network, Jennifer Wolfe has worked in the Media & Entertainment industry as a writer and PR professional since 2003.
