Weekend Box Office Results for December 3-5, 2010

Weekend Box Office Results for December 3-5, 2010

The ugly circumstances:

• There was no new movie in saturated release.
  
  
• The only one in fairly wide release was that "cowboy vs ninja" film.
  
  
• Each of the carry-overs dropped 40% or more
  

The result was the least attended post-Thanksgiving weekend in theaters since the Pilgrims acted out Hamlet for the Indians. Or at least since 1997. The top eight films comprised the same group as last week since the cowboy/ninja classic barely registered at all. As expected, Tangled fell less than Harry Potter, and thus emerged as the #1 film in its second week after having failed to reach that pinnacle in its debut. Those two films took in about as much as the rest of the top ten added together.

The Black Swan had a strong debut in 18 theaters. It produced the week's highest average per location.

Last week's "per location" champion, The King's Speech, continued to impress in its trial run. It was in the same number of theaters as I Love You, Phillip Morris, but grossed three times as much, even though it was in its second week and Phillip Morris was debuting.

The normal release pattern resumes next week with two saturated releases: The Tourist (Depp/Jolie) and the second Narnia film.