The Hunger Games: Catching Fire debuts with $161.1 million domestically, $307 million internationally

Lionsgate’s much-awaited sequel to The Hunger Games, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, thrashed its predecessor’s records in its first weekend itself, raking in $161.1 million domestically. $152.5 million opening of The Hunger Games has found a huge defeat from its follow-up, which also stands as the best November debut ever, beating The Twilight Saga: New Moon, which opened with $142.9 million in 2009. Along with the domestic box-office, all the 63 foreign markets have helped add $146 million more, pushing the global total to $307 million.

Catching Fire lags behind only three films in the history as far as the opening day’s numbers are concerned: The Avengers ($207.4 million), Iron Man 3 ($174.1 million) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 ($169.2 million). Though Catching Fire is lacking from 3D effect, it hasn’t affected its IMAX screenings much. The passionate audiences of the film have given a “A” CinemaScore grade to the film. As Thanksgiving weekend is also coming up, it’s quite likely that the vacations will help the sequel crush The Hunger Games‘$408 million domestic total too. Internationally, Catching Fire has already toppled The Hunger Games’ figures, which pulled in $283.2 million in its opening weekend, taking in $691.2 million globally at the end. Catching Fire’s $307 million overseas collections are 45 percent higher from The Hunger Games.

Thor: The Dark World has secured the second place in its third weekend, but dropped down by 61 percent to $14.1 million. The Dark World is likely to surpass Thor‘s $181 million domestic total next weekend, but as the present scenario hints it’s quite unlikely that it will cross the $200 million mark. Malcolm D. Lee’s comedic sequel The Best Man Holiday made it to the third place by falling down 58 percent in its second weekend to $12.5 million. Disney planned to put Vince Vaughn comedy Delivery Man against Catching Fire this weekend, but the plan didn’t work out much. Delivery Man delivered a meagre $8.2 million as per the ticket sales. The fifth position went to Free Birds, which also fell down by 35 percent to $5.3 million in its fourth weekend. There are also two new openers with a limited release this weekend, Disney’s animated flick Frozen, which pulled in a satisfying $238,000 from one theatre only, and the Judi Dench Oscar-contender Philomena, which grossed $133,700 from four locations. On Wednesday, Frozen will be released in around 3,600 locations and Philomena will also expand to about 500 more venues. The next instalments in the Hunger Games series, Mockingjay Part 1 and Mockingjay Part 2, will release in November 2014 and November 2015, respectively.