Weekend Box Office: Pitt Killed, Not So ‘Softly’

How wild is it that the Top 6 movies from last weekend all held onto the same box office spots despite falling between 43% to 60% on average? As usual, this post-Thanksgiving weekend was a total flop. The Top 12 brought in a mere $107 million. The only numbers of note belong to a few film milestones that were crossed.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn, Part 2‘ and ‘Skyfall‘ continue to dominate the box office. On their third and fourth weekends respectively, the two sequels both finished in the $17 million range. ‘Skyfall’ is already at a franchise best with $246 million, but the second ‘Breaking Dawn’ movie is still a tad under the mark – domestically, that is. Internationally, it’s now the franchise best and has a worldwide total of $702.4 million.

Brad Pitt’s new gangster flick ‘Killing Them Softly‘ opened $2 million under expectations. With a CinemaScore rating of F, audiences obviously had no clue what they were walking into and sure didn’t share positive word-of-mouth to others. On more than 2,400 screens, the film took a beating with a $7 million, seventh place debut. It’s a good thing that the Weinstein Company only paid $15 million for it. But as bad as the opening performance sounds, it played better than this weekend’s other new wide release.

On 1,400 screens, ‘The Collection‘ managed to pull in $3.4 million. That’s $1 million more than predicted, and $3 million more than what I personally thought it would make. The barely-advertised horror thriller debuted a slight $160,000 under its 2009 predecessor, ‘The Collector’, which I had no clue even existed.

Of note this week, out of Steven Spielberg’s three films to open in the last 13 months, ‘Lincoln‘ is now the most successful. ‘The Adventures of Tintin‘ brought in $77.6 million and ‘War Horse‘ earned $79.9 million, but ‘Lincoln’ is already up to $83.7 million and counting.

Silver Linings Playbook‘ and ‘Argo‘ may have been pushed out of the Top 10, but they’re still making noise. Despite still being on only 371 screens, David O. Russell’s ‘Playbook’ earned another $3.3 million. Its $9,005 per-screen average is the highest of the Top 12 by more than $2,000. And after eight weekends, Ben Affleck’s ‘Argo’ crossed the $100 million milestone.

None of the limited releases that I mentioned in my Weekend Movies post on Friday have had their weekend estimates announced yet, so you’ll need to check this afternoon to see where ‘Universal Soldier: Day of Reckoning‘ and ‘Dragon‘ have landed.

Top 10:

1. ‘The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2’ (Summit) – $17,410,000

2. ‘Skyfall’ (Sony) – $17,000,000

3. ‘Lincoln’ (Buena Vista) – $13,509,000

4. ‘Rise of the Guardians’ (DreamWorks) – $13,500,000

5. ‘Life of Pi’ (Fox) – $12,000,000

6. ‘Wreck-It Ralph’ (Buena Vista) – $7,020,000

7. ‘Killing Them Softly’ (Weinstein) – $7,000,000

8. ‘Red Dawn’ (FilmDistrict) – $6,550,000

9. ‘Flight’ (Paramount) – $4,540,000

10. ‘The Collection’ (LD) – $3,409,000

2 comments

  1. HuskerGuy

    Count my wife and I as part of the audience that had no clue what they were walking into with Killing Them Softly. We went to it on a whim to kill some time before reverse happy hour. Gave it a bit over and hour and then walked out from boredom.

  2. JM

    Worldwide box office is the only accurate measurement of Steven Spielberg’s dick.

    It’s all that him and Lucas talk about.

    (Dude sold Star Wars to avoid 2013 capital gains taxes.)

    $352M – Catch Me If You Can

    $219M – The Terminal

    $130M – Munich

    $374M – Tintin

    $178M – War Horse

    $84M – Lincoln

    It’s always sad what happens when filmmakers become senior citizens.

    “When the fall is all that’s left, it matters a great deal.” – Quentin Tarantino

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