The Hunger Games: Catching Fire , in theaters since November 22, remains on fire at the box office. Though crowded out of multiplexes by numerous new releases in the past three months, the second installment averaged a solid $1,333 for each of the 240 screens still showing the movie this weekend.
The $320,000 take for the three-day period now vaults The Hunger Games: Catching Fire into the all-time top 10 grossing movies at the United States domestic box office. Already the top-grossing film to be released in 2013 , the weekend’s ticket sales bring the total take for the second installment of the four-part Hunger Games film series to $423,628,000 — good enough for 10th on the all-time list of domestic box office moneymakers.
The film’s star, 23-year-old Jennifer Lawrence, is now the A-lister’s A-lister in Hollywood. Not only did she lead The Hunger Games: Catching Fire to becoming the first female-star-topped U.S. box office champ since 1973, she is coming off one Academy Award and is nominated for another this year , for her role in American Hustle .
In 2014 she will star in two sure-fire blockbusters, X-Men: Days of Future Past , and the third Hunger Games movie , The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part One.
To take its place in the all-time Top 10, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire edged out Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest . The Jennifer Lawrence vehicle also marks the first time that the first two entries in a franchise film series have each grossed more than $400 million.
Director James Cameron can take credit for both the Number One and Number Two top domestic box-office performers. His 2009 Avatar holds the top spot with $760.5 million collected from U.S. ticket buyers. Then his 1997 mega-hit Titanic follows at $658,672,302.
Marvel’s The Avengers , the ensemble super-hero pic from the summer of 2012, sits in third place at $623, 397,910.
Of course, recent films always look better on the box office charts because ticket prices at U.S. movie theatres are at an all-time high. When the chart is adjusted for inflation , it takes on a whole different look.
On the adjusted chart, the 1939 Civil War epic Gone With The Wind has a firm grip on the top spot with — in today’s dollars — a gross of $1.687 billion. The 1976 kickoff to the seemingly unkillable Star Wars franchise holds second place at just under $1.5 billion in 2014 money.
The Hunger Games: Catching Fire still looks respectable on the inflation-adjusted chart, cracking the top 100 at Number 94, one notch behind the first Hunger Games film.
