Punch Drunk Podcast Ep. 30- Remembering Paul Walker

Unfortunately we've had to edit the content on this episode at the last minute, we were planning on covering the new releases as usual but, much to our shock and dismay, Fast & Furious actor Paul Walker was killed in a car wreck yesterday afternoon. While we will still be covering this week's releases we thought it better to remember the career of yet another actor that we've lost far too young.

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Box Office: 'Catching Fire' and 'Frozen' Break Thanksgiving Records; 'Oldboy' Flops Hard

1. The Hunger Games: Catching Fire- $74.5M/$296.5M
In what is generally a fairly soft holiday weekend, 'Catching Fire' set the box office alight with a whopping $74.5M, which grows to $110M if expanded to include Wednesday. That breaks the record previously held by Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which hit the $82M mark in its second weekend twelve years ago. Worldwide the film has amassed $573M in a mere 10 days.
2. Frozen- $66.7M/$93.M
 As Catching Fire burns, Frozen is putting all of Disney's box office records on ice with a $93M five-day haul that ranks it as the studio's highest-grossing debut of all-time. The total more than trumps the $68M total for Tangled, which opened on the same weekend a couple of years ago and went on to earn more than $600M worldwide. The interesting thing to note is that Disney had planned for Tangled to be their final "princess" movie until it performed so well, and now they're on the verge of Frozen possibly becoming their top-grossing animated movie ever.
3. Thor: The Dark World- $15.4M/$186.7M
4. The Best Man Holiday- $8.4M/$63.4M
5. Homefront- $6.97M/$9.7M
Not even Jason Statham could best the might of this week's top two flicks, as Homefront opened to a dismal $9.7M, which admittedly is average for his solo films of late.
6. Delivery Man- $6.93M/$19.4M
7. The Book Thief- $4.8M/$7.8M
8. Black Nativity- $3.8M/$5M
Not even an obvious holiday family musical like Black Nativity, with an absolutely glowing cast, had any room to manuever this week. The Kasi Lemmons' adaptation of Langston Hughes' play earned $5M over the five days, but it may stick around for awhile as we inch closer to Christmas. 
9. Philomena- $3.7M/$4.7M
Bumping up more than 800 theaters and riding Oscar buzz for star Judi Dench, the real-life dramedy Philomena should stick around for the long haul as awards season rolls along.
10. 12 Years A Slave- $3M/$33.1M

It's hard to figure out exactly what FilmDistrict was thinking in their treatment of Spike Lee's Oldboy. After a brilliant, extremely creative art campaign emphasizing the film's more twisted aspects, they go and dump it in only 583 theaters with little in the way of TV promotion. The results are to be expected, $1.25M earned over the five-day holiday, making it unlikely the $30M feature will recoup its budget.

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