Apparently, Doctor Who's 50th anniversary celebrations continued later than Saturday's "Day of the Doctor" special episode, with BBC America announcing today that Monday night's movie theater screenings of the television special beat out everyone but Katniss Everdeen to become the second most successful movie in America.
There's actually an argument to be made for Doctor Who actually beating The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and taking the top spot for the evening. Certainly, the special screenings of "The Day of the Doctor" massively outperformed the second Hunger Games movie on a per-location average, with an impressive $7,155 per location against *Catching Fire'*s $2,623 average -- although it's ultimately an unfair comparison, considering the limited special event nature of the Who screenings (single showings in some 660 theaters across the U.S.) and the wide release of Catching Fire, playing in more than 4,000 theaters across the U.S. and nearing the end of its first week of release.
Nonetheless, *Doctor Who'*s Monday night haul totaled approximately $4.77 million, according to Rentrak, with more than 320,000 tickets sold, a new one-night record for NCM Fathom Events, which organized the theater screenings.
It's the latest record for "The Day of the Doctor," which also hit a new high for BBC America in terms of viewers during its Saturday airing, as well as setting a new record on Tumblr for the highest level of activity for any televised event in the company's history. It also broke *Breaking Bad'*s record for most activity on GetGlue, and became the most downloaded show on iTunes for BBC America within its first 24 hours of release.
Doctor Who won't be able to rest on its laurels, sadly; there's already less than a month until the debut of the series' 2013 Christmas special (and star Matt Smith's final appearance as the Doctor). Given the success of the series in theaters last night, though, it might be worth asking whether or not any episodes of the series will be given similar cinema treatment in the future. Seriously, how many people would pay money to see Peter Capaldi's first adventure as the Doctor on the big screen?
