Box Office Update: The Season of Suck

This shouldn't be such a surprise, but these first few weeks of 2011 will never earn as much as the first few weekends of last year. That's mostly because Avatar made so much more money than it deserved to. On the other hand, True Grit is proving to be kind of the Avatar of this year. That's a weird comparison to make between an epic sci-fi adventure and a smoothly paced western journey, but I feel it's a bit true. Of course, True Grit is far greater than Avatar, but both have appealed to mainstream audiences, made five times their opening weekends, and held onto audiences pretty well in subsequent weeks. True Grit is a film that shouldn't be this entertaining based on rather low-on-action beats of the plot, but Joel & Ethan Coen have quite obviously turned it into a roaring success.

Meanwhile, the new releases were obviously destined to fail, and Season of the Witch is already the frontrunner for next year's Razzie Awards. Besides negative critical reception, the film took in just over $10 million, which doesn't bode too well for the next few weeks. I'm not holding my breath. Country Strong did relatively well, but I expect a sizable drop in the coming weeks due to negative word of mouth. What really killed it this weekend were the heavy Oscar contenders this year. Black Swan, The King's Speech, and The Fighter all held on pretty well, and I wouldn't be surprised if they all clawed their ways towards the $100 million mark in the coming weeks. It's a longer walk for The King's Speech, but it could really turn the Oscar race around if it does well enough in the box office.

1. True Grit (Third Weekend; $15 million)
2. Little Fockers (Third Weekend; $13.8 million)
3. Season of the Witch (First Weekend; $10.7 million)
4. TRON Legacy (Fourth Weekend; $9.8 million)
5. Black Swan (Sixth Weekend; $8.4 million)
6. Country Strong (Third Weekend; $7.3 million)
7. The Fighter (Fifth Weekend; $7 million)
8. The King's Speech (Seventh Weekend; $6.8 million)
9. Yogi Bear (Fourth Weekend; $6.8 million)
10. Tangled (Seventh Weekend; $5.2 million)