'Life as We Know It' outraces 'Secretariat'

By Sarah Sluis

Over 100 million people in the U.S. use Facebook, so it's no wonder that The Social Network landed in first place for the second week, adding another $15.5 million to its two-week total of $46 million. The David Fincher-directed drama dipped just 30%, showing impressive holding power due in part to interested older audiences.

The Katherine Heigl-led romantic comedy Life as We Know It landed in second place with $14.6 million, beating the Disney feel-good horse film, Secretariat, which finished a place below with $12.6 million. Secretariat played well among heartland audiences, but Disney was hoping for a success along the lines of Warner Bros.' The Blind Side, which opened to $34 million and finished its run with seven times that amount, $255 million. Disney's new marketing chief M.T. Carney spoke out on the soft opening, hinting that strong Internet buzz may not have reached the non-urban audiences.

Wes Craven's high school serial killer movie, My Soul to Take, accrued just $6.9 million over the weekend, even with the majority of the screens showing the horror film in 3D.

It's Kind of a Funny Story finished in twelfth place with $2 million. Though outside of the top ten, the slightly edgy romance/comedy had a better per-screen average ($2,700) than many of the films in the top ten because of its low screen count (742 screens).

A number of specialty releases posted per-screen averages above $10,000. Sony Pictures Classics limited The Inside Job's release to just two screens, boosting the per-screen average of the financial crisis documentary to $21,000 per screen, the highest of the week. The star power of Robert De Niro and Edward Norton undoubtedly helped push Stone to a $12,000 per-screen average on six screens. The John Lennon coming-of-age tale Nowhere Boy posted a $14,000 per-screen average on four screens.

Buried posted the biggest gain among specialty releases, rising 105% as it more than doubled the amount of screens in release. Never Let Me Go, which had languished last week, rose 87% as it quadrupled the number of theatres showing the picture. Waiting for "Superman" went up 55% in its third week, crossing the $1 million mark, and Woody Allen's You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger added 31% for a three-week total of $873,000.

On Friday, Helen Mirren stars as a spy/assassin in Red, which centers on aging CIA agents, and connoisseurs of physical comedy can rejoice in the exploits featured in Jackass 3D.