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Monday boxoffice is tricky to analyze, because as you’d expect, the all-time list of Monday grosses is largely a history of long holiday weekends, namely Memorial Day, July 4th, Martin Luther King Day, and Christmas/New Year’s week. So strictly speaking, THE HUNGER GAMES’ $10.8M gross on its 4th day in theatres is only the 55th highest ever, a far cry from its #7 Sunday of all time.But if you exclude the holiday Mondays, things look a lot better. Those rank as follows:
THE DARK KNIGHT: $24.5M – 7/21 (-44% from Sunday)
PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: DEAD MAN’S CHEST: $18.1M – 7/10 (-49%)
HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PART 2: $18M – 7/18 (-50%)
AVATAR: $16.4M – 12/21 (-34%)
TOY STORY 3: $15.6M – 6/21 (-51%)
TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN: $14.9M – 6/29 (-54%)
SPIDER-MAN: $11M – 5/6 (-65%)
HUNGER GAMES: $10.8M – 3/26 (-69%)
That makes Hunger Games the 8th highest Monday not part of a holiday week or weekend, and the highest ever of those not in May-July or December. Factor in the extra audiences available for weekday movies when schools are closed, and the March achievement becomes even clearer.
However, Hunger Games‘ 69% decline from Sunday is a steeper decline than any of the 8 non-holiday titles above it, including those playing when schools were open, which may suggest increased front-loading and perhaps a heavier Weekend 2 drop. Of course, with $163.4M collected in just 4 days, all of this is just a question of how fast the rich get richer.
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