Weekend Receipts: Ribbit, Please
Welcome back to another edition of Weekend Receipts, where we drag out a Volkswagen-sized abacus, and have an intern slide bowling-ball-sized beads back and forth, all in an effort to bring you the most accurate and up-to-date box office calculations possible. Today, Disney's frog-leg gumbo and Matt Damon in a pair thigh-baring rugby shorts prove to be two spicy dishes America just couldn't resist.
1. The Princess and the Frog
Gross: $25,000,000 (new)
Screens: 3,434 (PSA: $7,280)
Weeks: 1
Fine, it's not wolfcake money -- but Disney's contribution to the supernatural shape-shifting romance canon easily won the weekend with a robust $25 mil, in line with studio expectations, and enthralling another generation with the magic of 2-D animation (plus Tyler Perry, who's been locked in the bathroom trying to perfect his Mama Odie).
2. The Blind Side
Gross: $20,440,000 (cume: $129,264,000)
Screens: 3,388 (PSA: $6,146)
Weeks: 4 (Change: -22.9%)
ESPN should totally return to the scripted programming they've abandoned since the cancellation of Playmakers by turning The Blind Side into a weekly drama. If the story seems a little too self-contained, perhaps Leigh Anne and Michael could hit the road, helping a different linebacker-in-need every week in an uplifting and spiritual show you could pitch as Touched By an Angel meets Friday Night Lights. With Heather Locklear in the lead! Touchdown!
3. Invictus
Gross: $9,085,000 (new)
Screens: 2,125 (PSA: $4,275)
Weeks: 1
Meanwhile, the movie buzzed about as being "The Blind Side except in South Africa and with rules no one understands" took in a scrum-tious (see what I did there?) $9 million. R.I.P. Matt Damon's Informant beer gut and pedostache -- but at least it was for the worthy cause of uniting a bitterly divided nation, and rocking a pair of thigh-baring rugby shorts.
4. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
Gross: $7,520,000 (cume: $267,360,000)
Screens: 3,635 (PSA: $2,201)
Weeks: 4 (Change: -48.1%)
Gasp -- fourth place. The Twihards have at last retreated, crawling back into their Twiholes (kind of like that room where Susie meets her maker in The Lovely Bones, minus Stanley Tucci licking his lips and fiddling with his glasses) to hibernate until it's time to feed/make Eclipse posters once again. You are never safe.
5. A Christmas Carol
Gross: $6,871,000 (cume: $124,464,000)
Screens: 2,402 (PSA: $2,015)
Weeks: 6 (Change: -11.5%)
Suck it, Scrooge. You've been pwned by Michigan J. Frog.