'Mockingjay - Part 1' Handily Defeats the Competition on a Humdrum Weekend

No surprises here--on a weekend devoid of any new wide releases, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 1 held onto the number one spot for the third straight week. Its weekend gross of $21.6 million brings it up to $257.7 million domestically; by the end of its run, it could be the second- or first-highest grossing movie of 2014. (The title is currently held by Guardians of the Galaxy, with its sweet $332.2 million.) The rest of the top five is Penguins of Madagascar ($11.1 million), Horrible Bosses 2 ($8.6 million), Big Hero 6 ($8.1 million) and Interstellar ($8 million)--almost the exact same as last weekend, only Horrible Bosses 2 and Big Hero 6 swapped places.

As for new releases, the biggest was low-budget horror flick The Pyramid, which opened in 589 theatres, just shy of the 600 needed to qualify it as a national release. Its poor buzz and low marketing yielded the expected result--it earned only $1.35 million, landing it in spot number nine.

Nightcrawler, The Homesman, The Babadook, Keep On Keepin' On and Boyhood (yup, still keepin' on) saw upticks in their box office as a result of added theatres, while The Theory of Everything added 24 theatres and saw its box office drop nearly 47%. That's not awful, though--it's already earned a healthy $13.6 million in its five-week run. The Imitation Game added four theatres and dropped only 16% percent in its second week, for a not-too-shabby per-theatre average of $50,250.

Reese Witherspoon's Wild opened in 21 theatres, where it earned $630,000 for an average take of $30,000. It will add about 80 theatres next weekend before expanding to national release on Christmas Day, when it will be up against a crop that includes Unbroken, Into the Woods, American Sniper (limited), The Interview and Big Eyes.

The only other new release to ping at the box office was Talya Lavie's Israeli military comedy Zero Motivation, which earned $9,700 on a single screen.