In this battle of the birds, the penguins never really had a chance.
They’re flightless, for one thing. And while the titular stars of the Penguins of Madagascar may scheme a bit better than your common flightless foul (emus hardly ever hatch such outlandish plots), that’s hardly enough to bring down the graceful and imitative mockingjay. And let’s not forget that the Mockingjay—Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1—can’t stand, um, Snow. That didn’t bode well for a quartet of birds hailing from the snowy Antarctic.
No surprise, then, that Mockingjay – Part 1 topped the box office race for the second straight week, earning an estimated $56.9 million to feather the competition. Sure, Mockingjay might’ve gotten off to a less-than-stratospheric start. But in just its second weekend, it became just the 10th movie this year to cross $200 million domestically. It now ranks seventh, less than $8 mil shy of X-Men: Days of Future Past.
Penguins of Madagascar, fittingly, never really got off the ground. Sure, it earned $25.8 million—not exactly anchovies. But as boxofficemojo.com points out, even 2012’s animated bomb Rise of the Guardians earned $32.3 million in its first weekend, so that doesn’t bode well for our formal feathered friends.
In contrast, Disney’s latest animated effort continues to bounce right along. Big Hero 6 lost less than 7% of its audience and earned $18.8 million to finish third. Meanwhile, Interstellar actually gained a few viewers, collecting another $15.8 million to stuff into its economic wormhole.
The weekend’s other major new release, Horrible Bosses 2, performed just … well, horribly. Its $15.8 million take was barely half of what the original movie opened with ($28.3 million). In a weekend filled with bird-saturated films, this R-rated comedy was the weekend’s financial turkey.
Final figures update: 1. The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1, $57 million; 2. Penguins of Madagascar, $25.5 million; 3. Big Hero 6, $18.8 million; 4. Interstellar, $15.7 million; 5. Horrible Bosses 2, $15.5 million.
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