Weekend Box Office Wrap-Up

So the weekend box office numbers of the only American industry—aside from weapons—that still consistently turns a profit:

No Strings Attached, the perfectly awful romantic comedy starring this year’s Oscar favorite Natalie (Black Swan) Portman and Ashton Kutcher rustled up a surprising $20.3 million dollar weekend. This for a film with a budget of $25 million means that Portman has a bona fide hit on top of Black Swann itself, which raised its B.O. to $83 million so far—very impressive, considering it was made for $13 million. So Portman’s definitely going to get her Oscar—it’s her year, after being in movie jail for a while.

The Green Hornet, Seth Rogen’s dreadful stab at action-comedy, made $18.1 million over the weekend—a fall of 46% over last weekend, which is not as bad as was feared, for a cum of $63 million. Then again, this was a $120 million lemon, and foreign prospects are weak; this weekend’s numbers were as high as they were probably because there was no other big mindless smash-it-up movie in the cineplexes. Bottom line, this was an expensive flop—so Seth, say good-bye to any career doing anything other than being a pot-head in a raunchy comedy.

The Dilemma, the Kevin James/Vince Vaughn laffer, is dying badly. Clearly, director Ron Howard was trying to recapture some of the comedy/drama gold of Parenthood (1989)—but missed.

The King’s Speech rumbled along for a $9 million weekend, a $58 million domestic cum, $91 million worldwide (U.S. plus rest of the world).

And rounding out the top five, True Grit held steady at $8 million for the weekend, $139 million cumulative—and that’s before the foreign release, which will tie in with the Oscar race. An additional $150 million from overseas markets—assuming TG scores big in the Oscar nominations, which is very likely—is very reasonable.