'Daybreakers,' 'Leap Year' finish behind holiday releases

By Sarah Sluis

Avatar led the pack for the fourth week in a row, posting a gross three times higher than its closest competitor, $48.5 million. Its week-over-week drop totaled just 29%, compared to drops in the in the 35-55% for the rest of the top ten. Its international gross, a few times that of its domestic gross, helped push the film to a wordwide $1.3 billion. It's the international market, not the domestic one, which will give this movie its best chance at beating the $1.8 billion worldwide record of Titanic--also directed by James Cameron.

The three films debuting this weekend cumulatively made less than Avatar. Vampire pic Daybreakers fared the best of the bunch, earning $15 million and the #4 spot.

Below Daybreakers, Amy Adams romance Leap Year finished sixth with $9.1 million. It failed to exceed the gross of its three-week-old competition, It's Complicated. The Nancy Meyers-directed romantic comedy earned another $11 million, bringing its three-week total to $76 million.

Youth in Revolt opened ninth with $7 million. With just 1,873 theatres in its release, the movie made efficient use of its screens, finishing with a per-screen average of $3,700, higher than half the movies in the top ten.

Many of the end-of-the-year specialty releases are expanding through January, posting significant increases in their grosses from week to week. The Young Victoria added 311 theatres for a 476-theatre release. The humanizing look at the budding monarch brought in $1 million, a 23% boost from the previous week. Fox Searchlight's Crazy Heart went from 12 to 33 theatres and earned $460,000.

After shedding theatres for the past two months, The Men Who Stare at Goats added back 120 theatres, boosting its gross 189% to $120,000. The week before, it jumped 30% unexpectedly--perhaps viewers are paying attention to those "For Your Consideration" ads?

The most successful of the films positioned as awards winners, Up in the Air, has grossed $54.7 million so far for Paramount. This week it enjoyed a $7.1 million gross and settled into its fourth week in the top ten. Its timely success at the box office could give it that extra push come awards season.

This Friday, The Spy Next Door (Jackie Chan + children) will compete with dystopic sci-fi tale The Book of Eli, as well as an expansion of The Lovely Bones.