Just as what we’ve called The Console Wars had a surprise ending, the big box office race of 2013 also had an interesting twist as well. Not so much a surprise ending really, but another big movie has unseated Iron Man 3 as the box office champ of 2013.
As Variety tells us, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, is now officially the #1 box office hit of the year in the United States, supplanting Iron Man 3 from the top of the ladder. The film finally nudged ahead of Iron Man 3 by $400,000.
Catching Fire made this landmark on Thursday, January 9, when it made $493,000 at the box office. And once again, it shows that dystopian young adult stories and superheroes still rule the box office. (We’ll see with Divergent’s March 21 release if another Hunger Games-esque story can catch on with viewers as well.)
As the L.A. Times tells us, this is also the first two movies in a franchise have grossed over $400 million each in the States. This was also the first time in five years that a movie that wasn’t released in 3D was the top winner at the box office for the year. (The Dark Knight, which was released in 2008, was the last non-3D movie to come out on top, and it was released back in 2008.)
