Weekend Box Office: Jessica Chastain & Jessica Chastain Come out on Top

If this weekend proved anything, Oscar nominations can truly boost a film’s performance, movies with lesser MPAA ratings make more money, and star power doesn’t mean as much as it used to.

The big shocker this weekend was the Guillermo del Toro-produced horror flick ‘Mama‘, which debuted in first place. Even though she looks more like Bryce Dallas Howard than herself in the horror thriller, Jessica Chastain bumped her own Oscar contender down to the #2 spot. Expected to bring in $16.9 million, ‘Mama’ actually raked in $28.1 million. Not bad for a $15 million movie, right? Meanwhile, ‘Zero Dark Thirty‘ also earned another $17.6 million.

PG-13 movies tend to make more dough than R-rated flicks, so it’s no surprise that ‘Mama’ beat out the other two wide releases. What is surprising is how little the other two star-studded films earned.

The Mark Wahlberg / Russell Crowe political thriller ‘Broken City‘ fizzled in its debut, opening in fifth place to a pathetic $9 million. The only think that makes that look better is the tenth place debut and $6.3 million earned by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s ‘The Last Stand‘. Arnold may be back, but probably not for long. What horrible openings for these two movies. Sadly, I believe the same thing will happen next week with R-rated ‘Hansel and Gretel’.

Making a good amount of noise this weekend was the expansion of Oscar nominated ‘Silver Linings Playbook‘. After nine weeks as a limited release, the David O. Russell romantic comedy opened nationwide and earned $11.4 million, bringing its cumulative total up to $55.3 million.

As of now, none of the limited release numbers have been announced, so you’ll have to check the actuals later today to see how they performed.

Top 10:

1. ‘Mama’ (Universal) – $28,000,000

2. ‘Zero Dark Thiry’ (Sony) – $17,600,000

3. ‘Silver Linings Playbook’ (Weinstein) – $11,400,000

4. ‘Gangster Squad’ (Warner Bros.) – $9,100,000

5. ‘Broken City’ (Fox) – $9,000,000

6. ‘A Haunted House’ (Open Road) – $8,300,000

7. ‘Django Unchained’ (Weinstein) – $8,200,000

8. ‘Les Miserables’ (Universal) – $7,800,000

9. ‘The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey’ (Warner Bros.) – $6,400,000

10. ‘The Last Stand’ (Lionsgate) – $6,300,000

1 comment

  1. Bruce

    Arnold killed his career. He looks old, out of shape and his cheating scandal along with that bull shit reducing Fabian Nunez sons sentence pissed off allot of people. He looks washed up., I love his pre governor movies but he lost his star power.. Just don’t like him anymore. I think allot of people feel the same way..

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