Weekend Box Office: January 7-9

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1.  True Grit - $15 million

2.  Little Fockers - $13.7 million

3.  Season of the Witch - $10.7 million

4.  Tron Legacy - $9.8 million

5.  Black Swan - $8.3 million

6.  Country Strong - $7.3 million

7.  The Fighter - $7 million

8.  The King's Speech - $6.8 million

9.  Yogi Bear - $6.8 million

10.  Tangled - $5.2 million

Well, it's about time.  True Grit finally took the top spot this weekend over Little Fockers, earning $15 million and crossing the $100 million mark, making it the Coen Brothers' highest grossing film, and galloping past the final grosses of previous Western hits Tombstone and Unforgiven.

Despite lagging behind Meet the Fockers' $204 million at the same point in its box office run in 2005, Little Fockers is still pulling in some respectable box office, earning another $13.7 million to bring its total up to $124 million.

Audiences seemed undeterred by the abysmal reviews for the latest WTF offering from Nicolas Cage, Season of the Witch, which wound up earning a reasonably decent $10.7 million.  I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume that it will make much less next weekend.

Tron Legacy enjoyed it's last weekend with the majority of 3D/IMAX screens (The Green Hornet will take those over next week) with $9.8 million.  At $147 million domestically, and an additional $110 overseas, it's certainly no Avatar, but it's definitely doing better than...well, the last Tron movie, anyway.

Is that an Oscar contender in the top 5?  Why, yes it is!  Black Swan continues its run as Darren Aronofsky's highest-grossing film with a domestic total of $61.5 million.  Other Oscar hopefuls The Fighter and The King's Speech also played well, earning $7 million and $6.8 million respectively, while Blue Valentine grossed $719,000 in just 40 theaters nationwide.

Country Strong opened wide this weekend to the tune of $7.3 million, which is OK, but it remains to be seen whether it has the potential to be this year's The Blind Side, which the marketing seems to be going for (at least that's the vibe I was getting from it). 

Overall, it was quiet weekend for the box office.  Next weekend sees the releases of The Green Hornet and The Dilemma.  So it might be a quiet weekend then too.