The eagerly-awaited second Hunger Games film, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire posted the fourth biggest opening ever in North America as it powered the box office to a 10% gain over the same weekend last year when Breaking Dawn, Part 2 ruled the charts for a second straight week.  The second film based on Suzanne Collins’ Y.A. franchise accounted for 7 out of every 10 tickets sold in North American theaters this weekend.
 
Buoyed by popular Thursday late night showings, Catching Fire raced to an astounding $70.5 million on its first day theaters, before adding $53 million on Saturday and an estimated $37.5 million on Friday.  The $161.1 million total easily eclipsed the previous record for November openings held by The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which set the previous mark of $142.5 million.  Overall the second Hunger Games film’s North American debut trails only The Avengers ($207.4 million), Iron Man 3 ($174.1 million), and the Harry Potter finale ($169.2 million). 
 
Compared with the first Hunger Games film, Catching Fire appears to be appealing to a much broader audience with the number of males in the audience up from 29% for the first film to a much more balanced 41% for the sequel, and the sequel also proved to be nicely balanced in terms of age, with 50% of the audience under 25 and 50% over.  Although a day-by-day analysis of the film does indicate that pent-up demand was evident in the front-loaded first weekend, Catching Fire earned a solid "A" CinemaScore, which should mean that it will continue to do solid business for weeks to come.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): November 22-24, 2013
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	The Hunger Games: Catching Fire	$161,125,000	4,163	$38,704	$161,125,000	1
2	Thor: The Dark World	$14,117,000	3,713	$3,802	$167,837,000	3
3	The Best Man Holiday	$12,522,000	2,041	$6,135	$50,391,000	2
4	Delivery Man	$8,215,000	3,036	$2,706	$8,215,000	1
5	Free Birds	$5,300,000	3,071	$1,726	$48,594,000	4
6	Last Vegas	$4,400,000	2,926	$1,504	$53,926,000	4
7	Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa	$3,450,000	2,625	$1,314	$95,451,000	5
8	Gravity	$3,305,000	1,845	$1,791	$245,503,000	8
9	12 Years a Slave	$2,800,000	1,474	$1,900	$29,393,000	6
10	Dallas Buyers Club	$2,770,000	666	$4,159	$6,450,000	4

The first Hunger Games film opened in March of 2012 with $152.5 million, so Catching Fire’s $161.1 million debut represents a solid improvement, though it is too early to tell if Catching Fire will be able to top the original film’s massive $408 million final domestic total.  It is likely that Catching Fire will earn considerably more than the original film, even if it doesn’t quite manage to top the first film’s North American total.  Catching Fire has already earned $146.6 million from 65 markets and is doing much better business overseas where the original Hunger Games film earned just $283 million during its entire run in 2012.
 
The successes of the Twilight, Harry Potter, and Hunger Games films have set off a veritable stampede in Tinseltown as the studios compete to acquire and produce the next big Y.A.-based hit.  Over the past two years we have seen failed attempts to create movie franchises based on Ender’s Game, Mortal Instruments, Beautiful Creatures, and The Host to name just some of the more prominent failed franchise-building attempts.  Why did those properties fail where The Hunger Games succeeded?

First of all there is the matter of the magnitude of the success of the original Y.A. novels.  The Twilight, Harry Potter, and Hunger Games novels inspired sales and a cult-like devotion among readers of a different order of magnitude than the Y.A. novel series that failed on the big screen.  The dystopian Hunger Games novels also contain Battle Royale-inspired action/adventure elements in the “duel-to-the-death” spectacles that appeal to male as well as female viewers. 
 
A good portion of the credit should also go to Lionsgate, an aggressive up-and-coming studio that gambled on The Hunger Games property by going the extra mile in hiring a strong cast including Stanley Tucci, Donald Sutherland, and Woody Harrelson (and adding Phillip Seymour Hoffman to Catching Fire).  Compare this with the pedestrian casting and production of the Percy Jackson films. 
 
The studio also pressed ahead to keep the franchise on a strict schedule, even though it meant replacing the director of the first Hunger Games film (see "Gary Ross Won't Direct 'Hunger Games' Sequel").  Given the success of the first film this was a risky move, but the studio felt it was important to keep the films in the franchise coming out on an annual basis, and the reaction of both critics, who gave Catching Fire a superlative 89% score on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, and audiences, who gave the film the best November opening ever, have vindicated the studio.  Lionsgate also hired top screenwriters Simon Beaufoy (Slumdog Millionaire) and Michael DeBruyn (Little Miss Sunshine’s Michael Arndt) to adapt Catching Fire.
 
But perhaps the best decision that Lionsgate made was its original casting choice of Jennifer Lawrence for the franchise’s central role.  A young actress with great natural ability and talent, Lawrence also has the physical gifts to make her performance as Katnis believable.  Plus her performances in  other films, most notably David O. Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook, have showcased her considerable acting talents to older audiences (and the critics), which in turn has led to a broadening of the audience for the franchise that is evident in the success of Catching Fire.
 
With Catching Fire taking 70 cents out of every dollar spent at the box office this weekend there wasn’t room for other films to shine.  Marvel Studio’s Thor: The Dark World  fell more than 60% for the second week in a row as it earned just $14.1 million, and brought its domestic total to $167.8 million.  This next week will be crucial for the Thor sequel in its drive to top the $200 million barrior, as the Thanksgiving holidays should present the opportunity for some solid ticket sales.   The Dark World should manage to eclipse the original Thor film’s domestic mark of $181 million, but it won't match "The Avengers bump" of Iron Man 3, which earned nearly $100 million more than Iron Man 2 ($409 million to $312 million) here in North America.
 
But don’t feel bad for Marvel Studios and Disney.  Thor: The Dark World continues to play well overseas where it has made almost 70% of its worldwide total of $381 million, which is already far ahead of the original Thor film’s final foreign total of $268.5 million.
 
Meanwhile the only other new film to debut was the drama/comedy Delivery Man, which stars Vince Vaughn and opened with $8.2 million, the smallest debut yet for a widely-released film featuring The Wedding Crashers star whose recent efforts, The Watch and The Internship have been box office disappointments.  Delivery Man appealed to older viewers with 81% of the opening weekend crowd over 25, and received an OK "B+" CinemaScore, which could be enough to help the film overcome its weak debut, at least to some degree.
 
Disney debuted its new animated epic Frozen at just one theater (the El Capitan in Hollywood) and earned $238,000 for this week’s highest per-venue average.  That average will decline precipitously when the film goes wide this week, but Frozen could be a player in next week’s box office report that will also track the debuts of the Jason Statham action thriller Homefront, and Spike Lee’s adaptation of the Korean manga-based film OldBoy.  Check back next week to see if any of these films can challenge Catching Fire for box office supremacy.