‘Catching Fire,’ ‘Now You See Me’ Drive Lionsgate To Become Billion Dollar Baby 2nd Year Running; Company Box Office Take To Date: $2.25 Billion Worldwide

Driven by the phenomenal success of its blockbuster franchise Hunger Games: Catching Fire and Summit Entertainment’s Now You See Me – the sleeper hit heist film which grossed a whopping $235M internationally — Lionsgate announced this morning that it has grossed more than $1 billion at the domestic box office and another $1 billion-plus internationally for the second year in a row. In 2013, Lionsgate achieved its best year to date in China with six films which grossed an estimated $116.3 million in that territory. It has an 8% marketshare in China and, overall, its international cumes have been buoyed by other markets, such as Latin America, the UK and Russia.

Lionsgate passed the $1 billion mark this past Sunday in North America when Catching Fire added another estimated $8.5M domestically for a total cume to date of $371.5M. Internationally, it brought in another $11M in 83 territories for a total of $393.6M. All told, Lionsgate has grossed an estimated $1.025 billion domestically and another $1.227 billion at the international box office for a worldwide box office total of approximately $2.252 billion to date. That figure will jump higher as Catching Fire is still playing in theaters around the world. It is Catching Fire that amounts for the lion’s share for Lionsgate: The second installment of the franchise has grossed a total of $765M worldwide just in its first five weeks of release. It has outperformed the worldwide run of the first Hunger Games which took in a phenomenal $691M. It ranks as the second-highest grossing film of 2013 behind Iron Man 3 which grossed over $409M domestically and a whopping $1.2 billion worldwide for Marvel/Paramount/Disney.

But it is Now You See Me that took everyone by surprise, grossing over $118M domestically to help push its worldwide gross to $354M. The cat and mouse thriller starring Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo and Woody Harrelson, is about a bunch of illusionists who pull off bank heists and the FBI agent who tracks them. “We continue to do more with less, maintaining our commitment to a disciplined financial model that is focused on limiting production capital at risk,” Lionsgate executives Jon Feltheimer and Michael Burns said in a joint statement. “We’re especially pleased to achieve contributions from our entire portfolio of films this year, from Lionsgate’s Catching Fire and Summit’s Now You See Me to Pantelion’s Instructions Not Included and Codeblack’s Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain.” Instructions Not Included, the sweet drama about a playboy whose life changes when a baby is left on his doorstep, is the highest-grossing Spanish-language film ever released in the U.S. It grossed a total of $44.4M when it was released in August of this year.