Out of the Furnace, the gritty new drama from director Scott Cooper with Christian Bale and Woody Harrelson, hits theaters this weekend, but the holiday mood is likely to stick around another week. That should keep Disney’s Frozen and Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire at the top after a record-breaking Thanksgiving.
Over the five-day holiday weekend, Catching Fire and Frozen both scorched the previous record for the Thanksgiving break, scoring $110.2 million and $93 million, respectively.
Frozen could squeak past Catching Fire this weekend, as families are still heading out the theaters and it is the only animated film out. The Disney movie is expected to drop at least 50 percent, which would still put it in the range of $34 million, notes Entertainment Weekly. It should reach $136 million by the end of the weekend.
Catching Fire is predicted to drop to around $31 million, which would put it at $341 million after only 17 days in theaters.
Box Office Mojo expects this weekend to be quiet outside of the two big holdovers, as is typical for the weekend after Thanksgiving. That means that Furnace will probably not do as well as hoped, despite opening at 2,101 locations. The movie is comparable to last year’s Killing Them Softly, which only opened to $6.8 million on the same weekend. Furnace would be lucky to beat that and is expected to make around $7 million.
As The Hollywood Reporter notes, the big specialty box office opening is the Coen Brothers’ Inside Llewyn Davis which opens in Los Angeles and New York. CBS Films is expanding the theater count on Dec. 20.
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