The Green Hornet comfortably took top spot over the Martin Luther King Box Office weekend with its $34 million opening sum, almost doubling the gross of its nearest challenger, the big name flop The Dilemma, directed by Ron Howard & starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James. One man who would have been most likely paying close attention to Box Office news over the weekend was actor Seth Rogen who has been involved in a string of flops ever since The Pineapple Express (2008). After Observe and Report scraped a profit and Funny People and Zack and Mirni Make a Porno both lost money, Rogen was under further pressure as a leading man in a heavily publicised picture, which he co-wrote. This time however the rut was broken as Green Hornet did well to find an audience in the superhero-comedy sub genre which features a notorious history of flops that includes Mystery Men, Superhero Movie and My Super Ex-Girlfriend. These type of films usually struggle to target a specific audience but a clear if uninspiring trailer and perhaps the reliable star power of an actress in the mould of Cameron Diaz helped to secure the film's success. The Green Hornet was also assisted by 3D ticket sales which accounted for 2,704 of the film's 3,584 venues. Films with an opening weekend in the $30 million range usually go onto gross over $100 million dollars domestically though The Green Hornet's reported $120 million budget means that it will still have a task on its hands to match such a sum and will probably have to rely on worldwide sales to turn a reasonable profit.
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Vince Vaughn has proven himself to be something of a Box Office Draw in recent years with a string of hits ranging from Couples Retreat to The Wedding Crashers to The Break-Up. In fact it was looking for a while like all you needed to do was slap an image of Vaughn on the cover of a poster and your film was sold. As such the rather average opening weekend ($17,419,000) for Ron Howard's latest offering The Dilemma is a shock. The comedy pairs Vaughn with Kevin James who has also been involved in a number of recent box office success stories which include the likes of Grown-Ups and Paul Blart: Mall Cop. In spite of the film competing against a big budget opposition I'm sure that both actors expected to find more of an audience. Judging by the wide-ranging negative reviews however the film probably doesn't deserve to. Our review comes this week as the film is released in the U.K. on Friday. In contrast the critically popular True Grit had a great week as it fell to third place but dropped just 23.3% in gross from its previous weekend. The film became the 2nd highest grossing western picture of all time and could well claw its way towards the $150 million mark. It seems that awards buzz helped The King's Speech climb five places up the chart to fourth as the Oscar contender came close to tripling its budget. Black Swan also had another astounding week as it gained viewers in fifth place. Sustained Oscar hype will likely see Darren Aronofsky's film continue to take small doses of money and should Black Swan reach the $100 million mark it would be an incredible success for what is essentially an arthouse movie. The full chart can be seen below... 1 N The Green Hornet Sony $34,000,000 - 3,584 - $9,487 $34,000,000 - 1 2 N The Dilemma Uni. $17,419,000 - 2,940 - $5,925 $17,419,000 - 1 3 1 True Grit Par. $11,200,000 -23.3% 3,459 +335 $3,238 $126,412,000 $38 4 4 9 The King's Speech Wein. $9,070,000 +41.4% 1,543 +785 $5,878 $44,595,000 $15 8 5 5 Black Swan FoxS $8,125,000 +0.1% 2,328 +744 $3,490 $72,993,000 $13 7 6 2 Little Fockers Uni. $7,138,000 -47.1% 3,394 -281 $2,103 $134,224,000 $100 4 7 4 Tron Legacy BV $5,674,000 -43.8% 2,439 -574 $2,326 $156,913,000 $170 5 8 8 Yogi Bear WB $5,345,000 -19.5% 2,702 -586 $1,978 $82,095,000 $80 5 9 7 The Fighter Par. $5,125,000 -26.8% 2,414 -114 $2,123 $65,770,000 $25 6 10 3 Season of the Witch Rela. $4,500,000 -57.6% 2,827 +11 $1,592 $17,998,000 $40 2 11 10 Tangled BV $3,949,000 -22.7% 2,048 -335 $1,928 $180,977,000 $260 8 12 6 Country Strong SGem $3,700,000 -49.5% 1,424 - $2,598 $13,305,000 $15 4 source - box office mojo