How do you know it’s a ho-hum week for box office? When Box Office Mojo’s Brandon Gray writes sentences like this one: “[The Rite] was the highest-grossing opening ever for Anthony Hopkins in a top-billed, non-Hannibal-Lecter role, surpassing Fracture.” That’s an awful lot of qualifications for success, and indeed, Hopkins’ lame horror/thriller The Rite was nothing if not a qualified success, opening in first place with $15 million in returns. The week’s other big opener, Jason Statham’s remake of The Mechanic, bowed in third with a mildly respectable $11.5 million, not enough to top the surprisingly frisky No Strings Attached, which won $13.6 million in its second week. The big story of the week is the Oscar bump enjoyed by The King’s Speech, which opened to 877 more theaters in the wake of its raft of Oscar nominations, and earned $11.1 million.
In limited release, the not-screened-for-critics indie From Prada To Nada—a comedy that somehow does not star Paris Hilton—did semi-respectable business with $4300 per screen on 256 screens for $1.1 million total. Meanwhile, Biutiful, the latest from poetic miserablist Alejandro González Iñárritu (21 Grams, Babel) survived mixed reviews to take $8100 per screen, perhaps on the strength of Javier Bardem’s Oscar-nominated performance. Gregg Araki’s Kaboom also performed well on a single screen with $13,700, despite its simultaneous availability on OnDemand services.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.