Weekend Estimates: Fockers Narrowly Beats True Grit

January 2, 2011

With no new wide releases over New Year's weekend, this week's was a battle of the holdovers at the box office, and thanks to the fact that Christmas Eve (a slow day at the box office) fell on a Friday in 2010, the weekend-to-weekend comparison for each movie generally looked good. Curiously, though, the top three movies all declined from last weekend while all the other movies in the top 20 saw increases. With plenty of films to choose from, audiences spent over $4 million on at least 13 different films, seven of which topped $10 million. That's not quite a record (no less than nine movies earned over $10 million over MLK weekend in 2001), but it is unusual.

Top of the pile for the weekend was Little Fockers, which passed $100 million, and improved a poor year for Universal somewhat. Falling almost 15% on a weekend when a clunker like How Do You Know rose 24% speaks volumes to the word-of-mouth on this one, though. True Grit followed in second place with an estimated $24.5 million, just $1.8 million behind Fockers, which means it's in with a slight chance of topping the weekend when final numbers are released on Monday.

The real winners this weekend were, as expected, family films. Tangled rose 56% to an estimated $10 million and has now earned $168 million for Disney. Yogi Bear added 48% from last weekend for $13 million. Even Gulliver's Travels increased by 44% to $9.1 million, which won't be enough to avert financial disaster, but reduces the sting a bit.

The other category of movie that enjoyed a good weekend was the Oscar hopeful, and Weinstein Co. had a particularly good time of it. The King's Speech jumped to $7.6 million over the weekend and has now grossed $22.8 million, while Blue Valentine launched with $180,000 in just four theaters to top the per theater averages for the weekend. Also performing strongly was Another Year, which opened with an estimated $120,000 from six theaters for Sony Pictures Classics.

- Weekend Estimates

Filed under: Weekend Estimates, Little Fockers, Gulliver's Travels, Tangled, Yogi Bear, True Grit, Another Year, Blue Valentine, The King’s Speech