From the very beginning, we knew The Hunger Games would be tough to take down in the box office arena. It scored the equivalent of an 11 in the hype-centric prelims, scoring magazine cover after cover and inflaming fans with a Twilight level of anticipation.
And sure enough, every comer has looked like an overmatched tribute.
Zap! First weekend, Games trounced 21 Jump Street with a $152.5 million opening take. Zing! Its next victim was Wrath of the Titans and its overbloated CGI. Zowee! American Reunion never stood a chance last weekend.
And now—a month after its initial release—The Hunger Games still hasn’t been beaten. Prognosticators estimate Katniss and Co. snagged another $21.5 million to top newcomers The Three Stooges (with $17.1 million) and The Cabin in the Woods (with $14.9 million). Larry and Curly, looks as if Games took Moe. Moe money, that is.
Most No. 1 films don’t hold onto the top slot for two weekends, let alone four. The last film to do so? James Cameron’s Avatar.
Granted, no one’s expecting The Hunger Games to challenge Avatar—or even second-place Titanic—on the all-time list. Worldwide, Games has made more than a half-billion dollars, but that’s only good enough for 85th place (a step below Madagascar) and far less than Cameron’s dynamic duo.
Not that Titanic’s taking any chances. The enduring boat, buoyed by its 3-D re-release, floated to fourth place domestically and another $11.6 million—and grabbed another $88.2 million worldwide. The weekend’s take made Titanic only the second film in history to clear a cold $2 billion.
Stooges and Cabin, incidentally, weren’t the only new kids on the block. A total of 10 films arrived in theaters hoping to make a splash. Alas, the lion’s share did belly flops: Lockout earned $6.3 million to finish ninth. Woman Thou Art Loosed!: On the 7th Day collected just $650,000 for 14th. And two films of particular interest to the Plugged In audience failed to make much of an impression, either: Blue Like Jazz, what director Steve Taylor has called a non-Christian Christian movie, earned $250,000 in limited release, and the über-family-friendly film Touchback scored just $65,000.
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