Box office: A chilly opening for ‘Out of the Furnace’

The lone film opening in wide release on Friday, “Out of the Furnace,” failed to generate much heat going into its debut weekend.

Starring Christian Bale as a blue-collar worker in a film directed by Scott Cooper of “Crazy Heart,” the film earned $1.8 million on Friday, according to estimates. The film, which also stars Zoe Saldana, Woody Harrelson, Sam Shepard and Forest Whitaker, earned mixed reviews and was expected to take in roughly $8 million as of Sunday according to pre-release audience surveys.

A relatively quiet slate of releases is translating to another strong weekend for “The Hunger Games: Catching Fire,” which continued its hold on the top of the box office charts with an estimated $7.7 million in sales on Friday. The second installment of the “Hunger Games” saga has taken in an impressive $317 million heading into its third weekend of release.

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Also still performing strong, the 3-D animated Disney musical “Frozen,” which earned an estimated $6.8 million on Friday. The film earned nearly $93.6 million of its $109 million total over the holiday weekend, making it the second-biggest Thanksgiving weekend opening ever behind “Catching Fire.”

Rounding out the top five was “Thor: The Dark World” coming in at fourth place so far this weekend with $1.2 million and the Vince Vaughn comedy “Delivery Man” at No. 5 with an estimated $1.1 million.

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Twitter: @chrisbarton