A new installment in a major franchise and a remake with two A-list stars fail to connect with audiences this week while BLACK SWAN, a twisted film about ballet, playing on less than a hundred screens, leaps into the Top 10 to become the toast of the town.
The third Narnia picture, VOYAGE OF THE DAWN TREADER, opens on top this weekend with $24.5 million, less than half of what the two previous installments did on their opening weekends. This minor victory prevented Johnny Depp and Angelina Jolie from scoring what should have been a hefty debut for THE TOURIST. Instead they could barely manage to bring in enough to cover one of their salaries with a soft $17 million debut.
No the big Top 10 news this week is the appearance of BLACK SWAN at number 6 with $3.3 million from just 90 screens in North America. The Darren Aronofsky directed Oscar contender scored a poweful $37K per screen average, an extreme rarity in the Top 10. As the accolades continue to pour in during awards season, BLACK SWAN looks poised for a standing ovation.
Below the Top 10, another critical darling scores a per screen average that is more than double the size of BLACK SWAN. David O. Russell's incredible boxing film, THE FIGHTER, pulled in an average of $80K per screen on just 4 screens across the country. It goes wide next week. Meanwhile, Colin Firth's work on the talk show circuit has helped THE KING'S SPEECH net a healthy $31K per screen average in its third week of limited release. There wasn't much love for Julie Taymor's THE TEMPEST, with Helen Mirren, which earned but $9K per screen on only 5 screens.
NEXT WEEK: Reese Witherspoon returns to the big screen, 2500 of them actually, with HOW DO YOU KNOW, opposite Paul Rudd. YOGI BEAR goes after the family fare picnic basket on 3400 screens. TRON LEGACY finally races onto more than 3300 screens. As previously mentioned, THE FIGHTER expands to 2200 screens. And the touching John Cameron Mitchell film, RABBIT HOLE, opens gently on 5 screens.
Source: Box Office Mojo
