Box office update: 'Contraband' snags first place with $8.7 mil on Friday

Contraband snags first place with $8.7 mil on Friday

Critics were lukewarm about Marky Mark's smuggling actioner, but audiences have responded well to it.

The most dramatic conflict of last year between critics and audiences was about Soul Surfer, which scored 46% at RT, but an A+ at CinemaScore. The gap is similar, albeit slightly smaller, with Wahlberg's film. Contraband's Rotten Tomatoes score is also 46%, but it scored A- rather than A+ with audiences. Soul Surfer ended up with a superior 4+ ratio between its final gross and its opening weekend gross, a fact which could portend an unexpected $100 million finish for Contraband.

Contraband took in $8.7 million Friday.

Beauty and the Beast 3D: second place; $5.6M.

Joyful Noise(Parton/Latifah): $3.3 million; third place.

The Margaret Thatcher movie finished about as expected: ninth place, $1.5M. That is not as bad as it sounds, because it is only in about 1/3 as many theaters as the other three new films. (It pulled in about the same per theater as Beauty and the Beast, and considerably more than Joyful Noise.)