LOS ANGELES — The college thriller The Roommate has moved into the top spot at the box office with a $15.6 million debut during a typically slow Super Bowl weekend in which the NFL championship game preoccupies movie fans.
The Sony release features Leighton Meester as a psycho freshman who becomes obsessed with her new roomie (Minka Kelly).
The 3-D underwater cave adventure Sanctum, whose producers include Avatar creator James Cameron, drew modest crowds and came in second with $9.2 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
Released by Universal, Sanctum is a survival story about explorers trapped underground in flooded caves during a monster storm.
The previous weekend’s No. 1 movie, Anthony Hopkins’ exorcism thriller The Rite, fell steeply to sixth-place with $5.6 million. The Warner Bros. release raised its 10-day total to $23.7 million.
Revenue estimates were off sharply on Sunday as football fans gave movies a pass in favour of the big game. Even without the Super Bowl, though, it was another sleepy weekend at theatres, with overall business down for the 13th-straight weekend compared to last year, when Cameron’s 3-D sensation Avatar still was riding high.
“I think Hollywood would be crying right now were it not for the Avatar excuse. It really was an anomaly how well that film was doing in January and February last year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, analyst for box-office tracker Hollywood.com.
This weekend’s receipts came in at $86 million, down 25 per cent from the same weekend in 2010, according to Hollywood.com. A year ago, the weekend was led by Dear John in first-place with $30.5 million and Avatar in second with $22.9 million, a huge number for a film that already had been in theatres for nearly two months. Largely because of Avatar, overall revenues so far this year are running 24 per cent behind 2010’s.
Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theatres, according to Hollywood.com. Final figures will be released today.
1. The Roommate, $15.6 million.
2. Sanctum, $9.2 million.
3. No Strings Attached, $8.4 million.
4. The King’s Speech, $8.3 million.
5. The Green Hornet, $6.1 million.
6. The Rite, $5.6 million.
7. The Mechanic, $5.4 million.
8. True Grit, $4.8 million.
9. The Dilemma, $3.5 million.
10. Black Swan, $3.4 million.
Online: http://www.hollywood.com/boxoffice