Colin Firth in A Single Man
All but two movies on the top-twelve domestic box-office chart posted losses on Wednesday, according to Box Office Mojo. Obviously, the effects of Tuesday's minor Oscar bump didn't linger very long.
Avatar had one of the smallest drops, 1.5 percent, down to $2.647 million for a total of $603.7 million after 48 days. James Cameron’s sci-fier was followed by Mel Gibson’s revenge thriller Edge of Darkness, which lost 19.9 percent from the previous day, with grosses of $1.1 million. At #3, the Josh Duhamel-Kristen Bell romantic comedy When in Rome, earned 706K, a 19 percent drop.
Denzel Washington’s post-apocalyptic drama The Book of Eli came in fourth, with $668K (8.3 percent drop), followed by Legion with $520K (12.1 percent drop) and Dwayne Johnson’s fantasy comedy Tooth Fairy with $401K (12 percent drop).
Rounding out the top twelve were Meryl Streep’s It’s Complicated ($335.5K), Robert Downey Jr’s Sherlock Holmes ($335.1K), Sandra Bullock’s The Blind Side ($302K, a 4.8 percent increase), Peter Jackson’s The Lovely Bones ($291K), George Clooney’s Up in the Air ($289K), and Jeff Bridges‘ Crazy Heart ($238K, a 5.4 percent increase).
The Oscar announcement was likely the reason for the small increases posted by both The Blind Side (total to date: $238.7m) and Crazy Heart (total to date: $7.3m).
Best Actor nominee Colin Firth’s A Single Man also posted a small 5.4 percent gain, earning $72K (total to date: $5.2m). And we may be seeing more Oscar bumps this weekend.
Photo: A Single Man (Eduard Grau / The Weinstein Company)