'Hunger Games' Still Tops on 3rd Weekend

APRIL 9, 2012 - Despite the entrance of two competitive titles to the US box-office over Easter Weekend, The Hunger Games had little difficulty taking the top spot for the third straight weekend. Comedy American Reunion opened in second place, though its debut doesn't compare favourably to earlier series entries, while Titanic 3D wound up on the low-end among 3D re-releases.

The Top 12 earned an estimated US$117 million this weekend, which is up 14 percent from the same period last year but off a bit from Easter 2011 (which was later in the month).

The Hunger Games dropped 43 percent to an estimated US$33.5 million. That's the seventh-highest second weekend of all-time, and it's the best since Alice in Wonderland in March 2010. American Reunion took second place with an estimated US$21.5 million from 3,192 locations. That's much lower than the opening weekend for American Pie 2 (US$45.1 million) and American Wedding (US$33.4 million), and it's even noticeably off from the original American Pie in estimated attendance. 

Here are the Top 5 North American B-O studio estimates for April 6-8, 2012 weekend, in terms of rank, (previous week ranking), Movie name (studio), Weekend takings in USD, (Cumulative gross, USD) and week on chart, courtesy of Boxofficemojo. (US$1=RM3)

1. (1) The Hunger Games (LGF) $33.5 million ($302.8 million) 3

2. (-) American Reunion (Universal) $21.5 million ($21.5 million) 1

3. (-) Titanic 3D (Paramount) $17.3 million) $25.7 million) 1

4. (2) Wrath of the Titans (WB) $15.0 million ($58.9 million) 2

5. (3) Mirror Mirror (Relativity) $11.0 million ($36.4 million) 2