'Underworld' claims top spot with 'Red Tails' swooping in for second

Featuring leather bodysuit-clad Kate Beckinsale, Underworld: Awakening easily grabbed first place over the weekend with a $25.4 million total. The fourth installment in the action-horror franchise opened just slightly off the third, all but insuring there will be more Underworld films to come. 3D and IMAX ticket sales definitely boosted the movie's bottom line, wtih 59% of sales from 3D and 15% from IMAX. The slightly male-dominated audience loved the picture, rating it an A- in CinemaScore exit polls.

In second place, Red Tails overperformed significantly with a $19.1 million total. The historical picture, which focuses on the aerial assaults carried out by black Tuskegee airmen during WWII, drew raves from its audiences. The movie averaged an A in exit polls, with the very young and very old giving it an A+. Executive producer George Lucas had to finance and distribute the movie himself (20th Century Fox contributed nothing to the distribution) so this movie's success is a big nose-thumb at the major studios, who apparently didn't trust that a movie with an all-black cast could do well.

Two spots down in fifth place, Haywire debuted to just $9 million. I thought the Steven Soderbergh-directed flick was awesome, without succumbing to all the pifalls I associate with action movies. Apparently I was in the minority. Audiences gave the movie an astoundingly awful D+ rating in exit polls. Wow. Well, the movie was about as far as you can get from star Gina Carano's previous stint on "American Gladiators," so I suspect the negative rating had something to do with people's expectations not jiving with what they actually saw.

Post-9/11 drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close went wide in its fifth week and earned $10.5 million. The drama has been pretty much shut out of awards season, and some people may not be excited to buy tickets in order to revisit 9/11. It's actually the worst opening in some time for stars Tom Hanks and Sandra Bullock, though the tale really centers on a young boy, not Hanks and Bullock.

The Descendants, the Golden Globe winner for Best Drama, went up 17% to $2.4 million even as it shed 100 locations. It sounds like this George Clooney starrer is aiming for an Oscars push instead. The Artist, which won in the Best Comedy category, went from 216 to 662 locations, but it didn't soar as much as it should have. The silent picture averaged $3,500 per screen for a total of $2.3 million, finishing behind The Descendants. I wouldn't be surprised if the black-and-white movie has difficulty catching on beyond arthouse audiences.

Coriolanus, which is directed by and stars Ralph Fiennes, earned $60,000 from nine screens. The $6,700 per-screen average, however, is far behind the debut needed to launch an indie success.

This Friday, action drama The Grey will open along with the self-explanatory Man on a Ledge and Katherine Heigl detective comedy One for the Money.

 

'Underworld' expected to outperform 'Red Tails,' 'Haywire'

The fourth installment in the Underworld series, Underworld: Awakening (3,078 theatres) is expected to lead the weekend box office with an opening in the low $20 million range. Kate Beckinsale stars as a vampire "warrioress" in the action-horror sequel, which did not screen in advance for critics.

My recommendation for female-driven action this weekend is Haywire (2,439 theatres), which will definitely be the best film I'll see in January. Mixed martial arts fighter Gina Carno stars as a contract worker for the CIA who's double-crossed by her colleagues. In the extremely realistic fight scenes, she'll literally be picked up and thrown around by her hulking male opponents, then somehow manage to overpower them. Director Steven Soderbergh really does a great job showing how she's outmatched in certain respects, but absolutely able to dominate in others. I left the theatre with a huge smile on my face, a pretty rare thing. This is definitely an action movie for those who are pretty selective about their action movies, in part thanks to the great direction by Steven Soderbergh. The critical community as a whole gave the spy-action pic an 82% positive Rotten Tomatoes rating. Despite these enthusiastic responses, an opening weekend of just $8-10 million is expected. That's too bad, and I hope word-of-mouth gives this movie the number of eyes it deserves.

George Lucas shepherded Red Tails (2,512 theatres) through 23 years of development, funding it himself when Hollywood studios refused to finance a movie with an all-black cast. The WWII-set tale focuses on the Tuskegee airmen, a group of black male fighter pilots who fought the Nazis abroad and prejudice back home. Critic Doris Toumarkine admits the plotting is "formulaic," but lauds the actioner for its "solid entertainment and sensational special effects," as well as its coverage of the "civil-rights struggle" of the time. Red Tails is expected to be neck-and-neck with Haywire, with both coming close to $10 million. I think at least one of these could be a surprise overperformer.

On the heels of its Golden Globe win for Best Comedy, The Artist is expanding into 662 theatres. But will patrons demand refunds, as those in the U.K. did, claiming they didn't know the retro-styled movie was silent?

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which has quietly and successfully been in release for a month in six locations, will go wide to 2,660 theatres. Critics are divided, with exactly 50% on the positive side, and the other half giving it a thumbs-down.  67% of Rotten Tomatoes commenters liked the movie. I'm curious how the nation as a whole will respond to the post-9/11 drama.

On Monday, we'll see if audiences went with the heroine of Haywire or Underworld, if Red Tails can attract audiences of every color, and if The Artist and Extremely Loud can successfully scale their release.