BOX OFFICE TAKES ANOTHER DIVE

Business at the box office remained as cold as the weather in most parts of the country over the weekend. The top ten films together failed to crack the $100-million mark as the box office plummeted more than 30 percent below the comparable weekend a year ago when Avatar was still going strong. The weekend winner was True Grit, which earned $14.6 million in its third week — hardly an impressive victory figure — while knocking Little Fockers into second place with $13.5 million. That was less than half what the previous installment in the Fockers series, Meet the Fockers, earned over the same weekend in 2005 — $28.5 million. (Each film opened on the same December weekend.) Two movies that opened wide failed to draw much of a crowd at all. Season of the Witch might have been spelled with a B instead of a W as it grossed $10.6 million, and Country Strong went wide with $7.3 million — a figure not as disastrous as it might seem. The movie reportedly cost only $12.5 million to produce and was screened in only 1,424 venues, making it the highest-grossing film on a per-theater basis of any film in wide release.

The top ten films over the weekend, according to final figures compiled by Box Office Mojo (figures in parentheses represent total gross to date):
1. True Grit, Paramount, $14,605,135, 3 Wks. ($110,035,157); 2. Little Fockers, Universal, $13,487,245, 3 Wks. ($123,687,760); 3. Season of the Witch, Relativity Media, $10,612,375, (New); 4. Tron: Legacy, Disney, $10,090,002, 4 Wks. ($148,212,420); 5. Black Swan, Fox Searchlight, $8,113,011, 6 Wks. ($61,218,504); 6. Country Strong, Sony, $7,326,165, 3 Wks. ($7,463,454); 7. The Fighter, Paramount, $7,001,504, 5 Wks. ($57,845,946); 8. Yogi Bear, Warner Bros., $6,641,250, 4 Wks. ($75,436,771); 9. The King’s Speech, Weinstein Co. $6,414,407, 7 Wks. ($32,896,665); 10. Tangled, Disney, $5,111,098, 7 Wks. ($175,779,496).