The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part Two

The fourth and final movie in the Hunger Games franchise - the saga that turned Jennifer Lawrence into a Hollywood mega-star - ruled the North American box offices over the weekend, early results showed Sunday. The one really calling the shots is President Alma Coin (Julianne Moore), a slippery wartime ruler who sees Katniss as someone she can contain and, should the occasion call for it, discard. Globally, it reeled in $247 million, and even though Mockingjay couldn't catch Catching Fire's box office records, it bumped up the franchise's worldwide total to a staggering $2.55 billion.

"It will end up with an opening weekend close to that of last year's Part 1, which should be seen as a success despite not reaching the heights of the first two movies", said Shawn Robbins, senior analyst at BoxOffice.com. The film, loosely based on a 2009 Argentine thriller that won the foreign-language Oscar, garnered about $6.6 million.

Entertainment Weekly found that the film somehow lost it's way to an extent, as it didn't feel like a "Hunger Games" movie. His three movies, along with the first Hunger Games film, directed by Gary Ross, have helped propel Jennifer Lawrence to superstardom, accumulated one of the biggest box office takes of any movie franchise and inspired a resurgence in the popularity of archery.

In the six films before Lawrence's turn as The Girl on Fire, the actress' films averaged $26.2 million.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 picks up not long after the last film ends with the districts' rebels gaining momentum and Katniss continuing to serve as the face of the movement. Mockingjay made about as much as the rest of the top ten entirely this weekend, even as SPECTRE and The Peanuts Movie performed better than expectations in their third weeks. Director Francis Lawrence told MTV News that the moment was crucial to the films and characters.

Opening nationwide opposite Mockingjay 2 are Jonathan Levine's holiday comedy The Night Before, starring Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anthony Mackie, and The Secret in Their Eyes, starring Julia Roberts, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Nicole Kidman.

Mockingjay Part 2 will certainly not have a bad opening, but it will be considered a disappointment by a few. STX had projected a $7-9-M box office open.

Todd Haynes' drama Carol, with Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara as 1950s lovers, opened in four theaters in NY and Los Angeles and raked in $248,000. The picture grossed $2.3 million on almost 2,400 screens, landing in the No. 5 spot. That's already eclipsed "Casino Royale" to become the second highest grossing Bond film ever worldwide.

Things caved in for the Chilean miner movie "The 33", which wasn't strong in its debut and tumbled a massive 61.3% in its second week.