The box office had less Grit, more guns over the weekend, as The Green Hornet buzzed to $34 million and the weekend win—with, of course, receipts still to be counted for Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Thanks in part to a bevy of 3-D screenings (which accounted for nearly 70% of Hornet’s sting), the Seth Rogen-fronted film narrowly outperformed studio hopes
Vince Vaughn’s The Dilemma slid into second with a middling $17.4 million, while last week’s champ, True Grit, grimly held on to third with $11.2 million.
But maybe the biggest story this weekend revolved not around how much these films made, but how much they didn’t. “Overall business was down around 25% from the same weekend last year, which featured the one-two punch of Avatar and The Book of Eli,” wrote boxofficemojo.com’s Brandon Gray, “and this is shaping up to be the least-attended MLK weekend since the mid-1990’s.”
This may not bode well for the box office for the rest of the winter. Looking ahead, the upcoming release schedule looks a little bleak—at least until Justin Bieber: Never Say Never comes out in early February. Can’t wait for that one.
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