A movie about Navy SEALs starring actual, active-duty Navy SEALs? It would appear that American audiences didn’t consider the potential downside to this scenario—the SEALs’ rigorous training regimen does not include any lessons from Lee Strasberg—and figured that the likes of Charlie Sheen and Michael Biehn have nothing on the men who for all we know killed Osama bin Laden. Brushing aside the mostly poor reviews—and forging ahead on the endorsement of noted aesthete Tim Tebow—Act Of Valor registered a healthy $24.7 million in receipts, no doubt prompting talk of more SEALs movies, like Death Of A Salesman or Mamma Mia. More predictable was a solid gross for the latest Tyler Perry movie Good Deeds—in which he stars, hilariously, as a character named Wesley Deeds—but according to Box Office Mojo, the $16 million it earned for second place is his worst opening weekend since Daddy’s Little Girls. News was dire, however, for the other two openers: The Paul Rudd-Jennifer Aniston comedy Wanderlust and the Amanda Seyfried thriller Gone limped into eighth and ninth place, respectively, with $6.6 million and $5 million.
Not much action in limited release. The Forgiveness Of Blood, director Joshua Marston’s politely reviewed follow-up to Maria Full Of Grace, earned a respectable $10,700 per screen on three screens. Of the Oscar winners, look for a nice bump next week for The Artist, which at short of $32 million total could use the attention, and Best Foreign Language Film winner A Separation, which has brought in a very strong $2.6 million to date and has shown remarkable staying power after nine weeks in release.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.