No Strings Attached overhauled last week's number one film The Green Hornet in a close battle to the top of the weekend's box office charts. The Natalie Portman/Ashton Kutcher led romcom took a comfortable lead on its opening night, was narrowly out-grossed by The Green Hornet on Saturday, but then turned the tables with a close Sunday win. Overall the Ivan Reitman film triumphed with a $20.3 million victory over The Green Hornet's $18.1 million haul. As No Strings was made for around $35 million when all is said and done, they'll be happy enough with this at Paramount but perhaps they will rue the missed opportunity of mostly being unopposed by any other new releases. Still the r-rated sex comedy didn't do The Dilemma numbers. The film's $20 million opening was fairly typical for an Ashton Kutcher film and practically identical to the initial weekend takings of What Happens in Vegas which went on to make $80 million domestically. The latter film managed to keep making money mostly thanks to its opportunistic release which saw it competing with a number of male-targeted blockbusters such as Iron Man and Indiana Jones. No Strings Attached has seen 70% of its opening weekend attended by females which I guess means that the other thirty percent were disgruntled male dates/partners/critics? The film has also been also been released at an opportune time with testosterone fuelled Jason Statham vehicle The Mechanic unlikely to attract a large female audience during its run this weekend. The following week however No Strings Attached will likely have trouble against two new releases starring females in prominent roles; psychological thriller The Room-Mate and underwater action drama Sanctum 3-D. Has it made enough to sweeten Sony on Ivan Retiman directing Ghostbusters 3? That'll be the wider implication here.
Box Office Mojo report that
The Green Hornet has already out-grossed previous superhero comedy Kick-Ass although this is a relatively small success given that Kick-Ass featured little star quality, played on less theatres and was developed on only a quarter of the Green Hornet's reported 125 million budget. The Seth Rogen vehicle has grossed 63 million in 10 days and should comfortably stide past the 100 million mark domestically with the films worldwide box office receipts ensuring that it becomes a minor hit.
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After last weekend's disappointing opening Ron Howard's
The Dilemma continued its lousy run failing to even half its budget after two weeks in the chart. Ron Howard tends to either prosper with significant box office hits (Da Vinci Code, A Beautiful Mind, Ransom, Apollo 13) or under-perform with heavily publicised pictures (Cinderella Man, The Missing, EDTV) and The Dilemma looks like its slipping into the latter category. Box Office Success story of the week however has to go to
The King's Speech which dropped just 0.2% from its previous weekends numbers to almost quadruple its 15 million budget. The film has now been in the American charts for nine weeks and is thriving on awards success and Oscar hype. It is also worth mentioning that the film has performed majestically in England taking over 10 million pounds in just its first two weeks on release. Fellow Oscar contenders The Fighter and Black Swan also achieved low drop percentages in spite of being on release for a considerable amount of time. The full chart can be seen below. 1 N No Strings Attached Par. $20,300,000 - 3,018 - $6,726 $20,300,000 $25 1 2 1 The Green Hornet Sony $18,100,000 -46.0% 3,584 - $5,050 $63,441,000 $120 2 3 2 The Dilemma Uni. $9,727,000 -45.4% 2,943 +3 $3,305 $33,364,000 $70 2 4 4 The King's Speech Wein. $9,164,000 -0.2% 1,680 +137 $5,455 $58,622,000 $15 9 5 3 True Grit Par. $8,000,000 -27.3% 3,464 +5 $2,309 $138,633,000 $38 5 6 5 Black Swan FoxS $6,200,000 -25.7% 2,407 +79 $2,576 $83,581,000 $13 8 7 9 The Fighter Par. $4,515,000 -11.5% 2,275 -139 $1,985 $73,031,000 $25 7 8 6 Little Fockers Uni. $4,394,000 -38.9% 2,979 -415 $1,475 $141,186,000 $100 5 9 8 Yogi Bear WB $4,060,000 -24.3% 2,510 -192 $1,618 $88,890,000 $80 6 10 7 Tron Legacy BV $3,708,000 -34.7% 2,018 -421 $1,837 $163,268,000 $170 6 11 11 Tangled BV $3,006,000 -24.5% 1,860 -188 $1,616 $186,281,000 $260 9 12 12 Country Strong SGem $2,200,000 -40.3% 1,441 +17 $1,527 $16,962,000 $15 5 Thanks for reading.