The ComingSoon.net Box Office Report has been updated with studio estimates for the weekend. Click here for the full box office estimates of the top 12 films and then check back on Monday for the final figures based on actual box office.
The month of January came to a close with three new wide releases, but Joe Carnahan’s survival thriller The Grey (Open Road), starring Liam Neeson, won the weekend with an estimated $20 million in 3,185 theaters. Averaging $6.3 thousand per site, it’s quite a coup for the recently-formed Open Road distributors and their second release.
Kate Beckinsale’s return as Selene in Underworld Awakening (Sony/Screen Gems) dropped to second place with $12.5 million, down 51% from its opening weekend. It has grossed $45 million in its first ten days and is looking likely to surpass the $52 million total of the original movie and come close to the gross of its sequel, which made $62.3 million.
Helped by a Groupon discount ticket deal, Katherine Heigl’s comedy One for the Money (Lionsgate) took third place with $11.7 million in 2,737 theaters.
Lucasfilm’s Red Tails (20th Century Fox), starring Terrence Howard and Cuba Gooding Jr., dropped to fourth place with $10.4 million with a total gross of $33.8 million.
The statement “Lionsgate owns Summit” was never more true than this weekend as the crime thriller Man on a Ledge (Summit), starring Sam Worthington, Elizabeth Banks, Edward Burns and Jamie Bell, which was thought to do better than One for the Money (according to early tracking), actually wound up in fifth place with just $8.2 million in 2,752 theaters.
Stephen Daldry’s Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close (Warner Bros.), starring Thomas Horn and Oscar nominee Max von Sydow, took sixth place with $7.1 million, benefiting from its Oscar Best Picture nomination to maintain a healthy 29% drop from its first weekend in wide release.
Also boosted by its multiple Oscar nominations and expansion back into over 1900 theaters, Alexander Payne’s The Descendants (Fox Searchlight), starring nominee George Clooney, took in $6.5 million this weekend, bringing its cumulative gross to $58.8 million. It was followed closely by the Mark Wahlberg crime-thriller Contraband (Universal), estimated with just $18 thousand less and a gross of $56.4 million.
Ninth place went to Disney’s Beauty and the Beast 3D with $5.3 million, $41.1 million total, followed in tenth by Steven Soderbergh’s action-thriller Haywire (Relativity) with $4 million and $15.3 million in its first ten days.
The Top 10 grossed an estimated $92.5 million, up 3% from the same weekend last year when the supernatural thriller The Rite won the weekend with $14.8 million.
The one major limited release was the Oscar-nominated period drama Albert Nobbs (Roadside Attractions), which brought in $773 thousand in 245 theaters, partially thanks to its Oscar nominations for its stars Glenn Close and Janet McTeer.
Click here for the full box office results of the top 12 films.
