True Grit took advantage of a week where the only new mainstream release was the critically lambasted kids movie
Season of the Witch to claim the top spot during its third weekend in theatres. This is only the second
Coen Brothers film to reach number one in the United States after a star studied
Burn After Reading opened on top in September 2008. True Grit made exactly $15 million to take its total domestic gross to an impressive $110,430,000, - a sum which saw the film rise above
Unforgiven and
Maverick to become the third highest grossing Western movie of all time. It should easily overtake
Wild, Wild, West ($113,804,681) in second place although will fall well short of Kevin Costners multi-Oscar winning
Dances with Wolves ($184,208,848) which sits comfortably as the highest grossing Western. Still, what a profound success for a directorial team who once had a very devoted but limited audience which would see a wide number of their films take between just twenty and forty million dollars domestically. The battle to the top spot was quite exciting. True Grit was number one on each day of the weekend but it was still a closely contested scrap between previous number one
Little Fockers. Here is a breakdown of how True Grit took over as the number one movie in America:
FRIDAY: TRUE GRIT - $4,436,000 LITTLE FOCKERS - $4,425,000
SATURDAY: TRUE GRIT - $6,580,000 LITTLE FOCKERS - $6,358,000 This gave True Grit a near half million lead which it not only hung onto but extended on the Sunday.
SUNDAY: TRUE GRIT - $3,994,000 LITTLE FOCKERS - $3,178,000 Little Fockers ended up over a million short in the end but still saw its total gross rise to $123.9 million dollars. In spite of a massive increase in average ticket prices over the years the film will be lucky to catch the original
Meet the Parents which took an impressive $166.2 million back in 2000. It has also failed to net half the gross of the truly wretched
Meet the Fockers which took a mind-bogglingly good 279.2 million in 2004.
With a massive production budget of $100 million dollars (almost double that of Meet the Parents) Little Fockers has made a profit but not exactly set the world on fire and this means that hopefully people will think twice before deciding on another pointless update to a franchise that was already pretty pointless to begin with. To round up then.
Season of the Witch took third place with $10.76 million dollars - a poor sum but perhaps better than some were expecting for a film which
David Hughes from Empire Magazine describes as doing to the medieval era what Cages Wicker Man did to Anthony Shaffer. Ouch!
Tron Legacy almost reached the $150 million mark but has still yet to domestically match its absurd budget whilst low budget and likely Oscar contender
The Fighter rose to almost $60 million as another likely Oscar contender
Black Swan dropped just six percent to go close to earning almost five times its thirteen million production budget! Its a rare but great delight to see thoughtful, artistic films doing so well and lame, thoughtless blockbusters suffering to claw back their extravagant expenses. The chart in full can be seen below. Thanks for reading.
TW LW Title (click to view) Studio Weekend Gross % Change Theater Count / Change Average Total Gross Budget* Week # 1 2 True Grit (2010) Par. $15,000,000 -38.6% 3,124 +41 $4,802 $110,430,000 $38 3 2 1 Little Fockers Uni. $13,781,000 -46.5% 3,675 +121 $3,750 $123,982,000 $100 3 3 N Season of the Witch Rela. $10,726,000 - 2,816 - $3,809 $10,726,000 $40 1 4 3 Tron Legacy BV $9,803,000 -47.7% 3,013 -352 $3,254 $147,925,000 $170 4 5 9 Black Swan FoxS $8,350,000 -6.0% 1,584 +31 $5,271 $61,455,000 $13 6 6 43 Country Strong SGem $7,300,000 +17,487.8% 1,424 +1,422 $5,126 $7,437,000 $15 3 7 6 The Fighter Par. $7,000,000 -30.0% 2,528 -6 $2,769 $57,844,000 $25 5 8 10 The King's Speech Wein. $6,811,000 -12.4% 758 +58 $8,985 $33,293,000 $15 7 9 4 Yogi Bear WB $6,810,000 -45.0% 3,288 -227 $2,071 $75,606,000 $80 4 10 7 Tangled BV $5,200,000 -47.0% 2,383 -199 $2,182 $175,868,000 $260 7 11 5 The Chronicles of Narnia: The Voyage of the Dawn Treader Fox $4,750,000 -53.7% 2,814 -134 $1,688 $94,681,000 $155 5 12 8 Gulliver's Travels Fox $4,700,000 -49.5% 2,964 -125 $1,586 $34,560,000 $112 3