The Imitation Game is probably one of the most expected movies of this season and with great reasons, already proven by critics, reviews and Oscar buzzes. If that is true, why did The Hunger Games: Mockingjay — Part 1 still top The Weekend Box Office? The Imitation Game was released on 28 November (Friday), which would have given it the necessary time to hit first position, but it did not even reach top ten titles. Were all those who praised the movie in anticipation (with only scraps, pictures, trailers at hand) entirely wrong? The answer is negative; their prophecies were not made in vain, as The Imitation Game hit as the second best debut per theater of 2014.
The Guardian classified Morten Tyldum’s movie as ‘’the big winner at the US box office this weekend’’, although it opened in only four cinemas in New York and Los Angeles (and not 4,151 like the lead production). Numbers speak for themselves: $120,500 per cinema, with a total earning of $482,000. The only movie to succeed in gathering a higher figure/screen was Wes Anderson’s The Grand Budapest Hotel ($220,000), a great story encompassing other fascinating stories, played by even greater actors. Via Deadline, Erik Lomis, TWC’s president of distribution, stated the following: “We had a tremendous opening. Clearly, audiences loved it in New York and Los Angeles this weekend (…) To do this in this crowded marketplace with serious contenders speaks a lot” and compared Tyldum’s biography-drama-thriller with grand names like The King’s Speech (2010) or The Artist (2011).
The Imitation Game will expend to more theaters in the following weeks and by the end of the month (25 December) the majority of the anxious cinema-goers will have had the opportunity to join Alan Turing in his game of fate. It deals with the major historical context of WWII, Alan Turing was a pioneer of computer sciences and apart from this, his personal preferences hint at the right amount of spice needed to build a controversial movie lead. Director Morten Tyldum may have won the lottery when choosing Benedict Cumberbatch (and not only because rumors have it that he is really related to the character he portrays in the movie), but because he is obviously on the up-and-up.