Hunger Games 2 Catching Fire Ticket Sales: Beats Harry Potter, Frozen Bests Toy Story 2
This Thanksgiving weekend was a time to eat turkey, shop and go to the movies as The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Frozen set Thanksgiving box office records.
Lionsgate's The Hunger Games: Catching Fire has already made a name for itself, but its flames are still blazing with its newest records.
The movie, based off of the Suzanne Collins novel, earned the honor of having the best Thanksgiving weekend record. "Thanksgiving weekend" starts on Wednesday and ends Sunday. The film made $110.2 million from Wednesday-Sunday (and $74.5 million from Friday through Sunday), Forbes reports.
As a result, Catching Fire has ousted the best Thanksgiving box office weekend record from another novel series-turned movie series, Harry Potter. The second movie in The Hunger Games trilogy took the record from the second weekend of the first Harry Potter movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which brought in $82 million.
If you take inflation into account, the Catching Fire is in third place behind Toy Story 2 ($127 million) and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ($117 million), according to Forbes.
Meanwhile, Disney's Frozen now holds the record for the biggest Thanksgiving weekend debut. The animated film brought in $93.3 million from Wednesday through Sunday (and $66.7 million from Friday through Sunday).
Previously, the record for biggest Thanksgiving weekend debut was held by Toy Story 2, which debuted in 1999 and earned $88 million between Wednesday and Sunday.
"The numbers are a bit crazy. Sort of hard to comprehend really, but this franchise does have an amazing fan base," Francis Lawrence, Catching Fire director, said on Nov. 24 via e-mail.