Dear John, thanks for finally giving me something other then Avatar to write in the title. Now that I got that out of my system let me get down to business since I know you guys missed me last week, right, you did miss me, right?
Dear John becomes the new Lost in Space this weekend. You see, Lost in Space was the first movie 12 years ago to finally take Titanic down to second place in the weekend charts. At that time Titanic, like Avatar now, was the highest grossing movie of all time. Congratulations again for entering a very select club Dear John. This new Nicholas Sparks adaptation brought in $30.4 million over the weekend, making it by far the biggest opener for the best-selling author. This movie took many experts by surprise since most thought it was headed for a low $20 million opening (in plain English that means $20-23 million). After a very strong Friday ($13.7 million, the biggest for any new release this year) Dear John lost some steam over Saturday and a lot more on Sunday (because of the Super Bowl) but still managed to easily come on top with the second biggest opening of the year so far (Book of Eli made 32.7).
Not much more to say about Avatar that hasn’t been said already, it made another $22.8 million and had its biggest weekend drop so far, even that being a minuscule 26.9%, a number that would be considered outstanding for any other flick. That and it now stands at $2,209,268,605 million worldwide in 52 days .
From Paris with Love flops big time in 3rd place with an extremely low $8.1 million for a movie that was expected to open at least on the same level as The Edge of Darkness last weekend. What can I say, it seems this didn’t click with audiences at all, unlike Taken last year, a movie made by the same producer-director team.
In 4th place we have another disappointment on our hands, The Edge of Darkness with only $6.8 million in its second weekend for a total of $28.9 million in 10 days, all of this on an $80 million budget. Maybe Martin Campbell should get back to rebooting Bond flicks, he is really good at that. Poor Mel might have to reconsider starring in Mad Max 4 because last time I checked he was only producing the picture.
In 5th place Tooth Fairy keeps on building its box office slow and steady, this time with $6.6 million and now standing at a total of $34.4 million, ever so close to that $48 million budget. It’s no hit but it won’t get anyone fired either.
In the rest of the top 10 Crazy Heart expanded to 819 theaters, enough to boost this Jeff Bridges movie to $3.5 million, good for 8th place and Sherlock Holmes finally passed the $200 million mark finishing the weekend in 10th place with $2.5 million.
| TW | LW | Title (click to view) | Studio | Weekend Gross | % Change | Theater Count / Change | Average | Total Gross | Budget* | Week # | |
| 1 | N | Dear John | SGem | $30,468,614 | - | 2,969 | - | $10,262 | $30,468,614 | $25 | 1 |
| 2 | 1 | Avatar | Fox | $22,850,881 | -26.9% | 3,000 | -74 | $7,617 | $629,344,204 | - | 8 |
| 3 | N | From Paris with Love | LGF | $8,158,860 | - | 2,722 | - | $2,997 | $8,158,860 | $52 | 1 |
| 4 | 2 | Edge of Darkness | WB | $6,855,371 | -60.2% | 3,066 | - | $2,236 | $28,947,851 | $80 | 2 |
| 5 | 4 | Tooth Fairy | Fox | $6,629,595 | -33.7% | 3,218 | -127 | $2,060 | $34,462,568 | $48 | 3 |
| 6 | 3 | When in Rome | BV | $5,549,129 | -55.1% | 2,456 | - | $2,259 | $20,944,734 | - | 2 |
| 7 | 5 | The Book of Eli | WB | $4,717,335 | -47.0% | 2,820 | -255 | $1,673 | $82,045,140 | $80 | 4 |
| 8 | 14 | Crazy Heart | FoxS | $3,567,671 | +54.5% | 819 | +580 | $4,356 | $11,105,401 | $7 | 8 |
| 9 | 6 | Legion (2010) | SGem | $3,453,651 | -51.9% | 2,339 | -137 | $1,477 | $34,731,934 | $26 | 3 |
| 10 | 8 | Sherlock Holmes | WB | $2,535,174 | -43.9% | 1,805 | -445 | $1,405 | $201,484,470 | $90 | 7 |
