Welcome to the Dead Zone. No, Christopher Walken isn’t around having psychic visions – it refers to this quiet period in the American box-office release schedules between Thanksgiving and Christmas when the studios largely eschew releasing big films and the charts show little change. Which might explain why The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 is still ruling the top of the charts with $21.6 million this weekend.
The third Hunger Games outing has spent three weeks at the top so far, earning $257.7 million as a US total and more than $300 million internationally. Those Penguins Of Madagascar held on for dear life in second place, taking in $11.1 million for a still-low $49.5 million total to date. One of the beneficiaries of this quiet period was Horrible Bosses 2, which clawed its way up from fifth to third and added $8.6 million. But with $36 million in the bank so far, it still hasn’t made its budget back domestically yet.
Disney’s **Big Hero 6 **was pushed one place down to fourth, as Baymax and co. earned $8.1 million. That still kept it ahead of Interstellar, which slipped to fifth with $8 million.
Dumb And Dumber To stayed at sixth, goofing off with $4.1 million, while The Theory Of Everything hovered at seventh, adding $2.6 million for a $13.6 million total in more limited release so far. **Gone Girl **was once more eighth, taking in $1.5 million, while Fox opted to open its new horror pic The Pyramid on a relatively limited number of screens (589, to be exact) with the movie scaring up $1.3 million. Birdman, meanwhile, slipped down one place to ten, with $1.1 million this weekend and $18.9 in total so far.
To see Katniss Everdeen smacking a creepy Egyptian pyramid creature around in the full chart listings, point your browser at Box Office Mojo.