BOX OFFICE: WORST WEEKEND OF THE YEAR

The weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday lived up to its reputation as a lowpoint of the year at the box office. But this one was even lower than usual, worse even than the weekend after the Labor Day holiday, before kids return to school. The total box office was down 6 percent from the same weekend last year, with the top two films losing nearly two-thirds of their audience from last week. Summit Entertainment’s The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1 held on to first place for the third consecutive week with $16.5 million, down 60 percent from the previous week. Disney’s The Muppets, which many forecasters had expected to take over the top spot, earned just $11 million, down 62 percent from last week. Three other family films followed, but each ended up in single digits, Hugo, with $7.5 million; Arthur Christmas, with $7.4 million, and Happy Feet Two, with $5.9 million. Each of those films carried 3D surcharges. (Without so many family films cannibalizing one another a year ago, the second week of Disney’s Tangled moved into first place with $21.6 million, displacing the third week of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, which took in $17 million.) Fox Searchlight’s NC-17-rated Shame made an impressive debut in just ten theaters, earning $349,519 or a per-theater take of $34,952 (versus $4,087 for Breaking Dawn). For all of 2011, revenue is down 3.72 percent from 2010, while attendance is down 4.56 percent.

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. The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn — Part 1, Summit Entertainment, $16,535,465, ($246,926,409); 2. The Muppets, Disney, $11,082,755, ($56,357,170); 3. Hugo, Paramount, $7,557,709, ($25,121,185); 4. Arthur Christmas, Sony/Columbia, $7,401,736, ($25,343,487); 5. Happy Feet 2, Warner Bros., $5,919,390, ($51,704,566); 6. Jack and Jill, Sony, $5,356,973, ($64,165,454); 7. The Descendants. Fox Searchlight, $4,789,741, ($17,677,071); 8. Immortals, Relativity Media, $4,464,889, ($75,659,174); 9. Tower Heist, Universal, $3,953,925, ($70,598,755); 10. Puss in Boots, Paramount/DreamWorks Animation, $3,042,241, ($139,514,442).