and.....

The Hunger Games: Catching Fire claims the #1 spot at the Australian box office with an impressive $2.72m

anyone know how good this Australian number is?

That would be so awesome.

I think its just ok but not GREAT. I know Australian BO is on fire and while its an increase from the last movie its not a HUGE number for it IMO.

from RTH on Boxoffice.com. UK opening day

Right now it looks like 1.15m admissions (i.p.) - first one had 386,276 opening...

It could have been bigger, but local blockbuster FACK JU GÖHTE is still very strong...

Great great great. This is A LOT more than I expected.

China opening day is $2.45m. Ouch.

Gravity is doing very well, but also The Hunger Games just isn't popular here. I'm so glad I live in a country that loves Escape Plan more than Jennifer Lawrence crap.

Hong Kong Thursday estimate is $206,000 $235,000 (updated). Considering Hong Kong is only 0.52% the size of China (population wise), The Hunger Games did extremely well in HK compared to mainland.

Which shows once again that China is not a Communist country...
THE HUNGER GAMES movies are communist propaganda movies (in a good way) par excellence...

On another note, Escape Plan stayed at #2 while Thor fell from #1 to #3.

The first one opened to 1.75m OD. So it's a goood improvement but not a huge one. This should get it to about 12m for the weekend up from the first films 9m OW.

For comparison - Avengers had a 6m OD and New Moon had a 4m OD. So the franchise isn't as big here as it is in the US.

BRAZIL (admissions):

481,006 THG
1,050,000 CF

Mark you really should do your Top 100 in the Cinemania section. Would love to see your list.

I don't even have time to do such a list on my website...

That sucks. But I also hate you not having enough time for your website so...

That's expected, though. Hong Kong residents are much more susceptible to Western franchises, whereas China only really like the big superhero/explosion franchises.

It doesn't show anything of the sort. It's not advertised as a pro-Communist experience, so Chinese moviegoers' decision to attend or not is based on whether it looks entertaining or star power - the film has pretty much zero star power for Chinese people and it doesn't look too entertaining either. It'll be making next to nothing this time next week.

Now, going back to the Communist comment, if there was a Chinese-made pro-Communist movie, it would be manufactured to be successful; we're talking tons of commercials, posters, in so many cinemas with tons of showtimes etc., on all the national entertainment TV shows, staying in cinemas for much longer than 30 days, and all other movies (especially Intl ones) would be forced to open later. The film would be a hit. I suppose, based on that result, you would say that that's proof that China is a Communist country.

Truth is, there are just too many factors in cinema trends to be able to bluntly pull out the political card and label an entire country as either one thing or another. Now, in my experience, many Chinese are not Communist, but then many also are too, and there attendance (or lack of) of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire neither proves one thing or disproves another.

It appears unlike past sequels.


Film will increase much more in developed markets and not so much in developing markets.

Still 500 I see.

Well, that's BS.

How do you explain Brazil?

China just doesn't like this franchise as much as other countries. It has nothing to do with their developing status.

Is irony (without a smiley) known in China?

Irony is performing worse than Escape Plan there.