The Super Bowl usually means super bad box office, but this past weekend wasn’t about the usual.
For the first time ever, two films opened to more than $20 million on a Super Bowl weekend. They were — not surprisingly — fantasies geared to younger audiences.
“Chronicle,” a found-footage teen super-power film starring unknowns, brought in $22 million, while Daniel Radcliffe’s first post-Harry Potter outing, the old-fashioned spook fest “The Woman in Black,” made $21 million.
They led the box office to a total of $95.9 million, which is up 31 percent from Super Bowl 2011 weekend. Before anybody gets too excited, that’s still down 5 percent from 2010 (which had “Avatar”). But things do seem to be looking markedly up compared to last year’s dismal start.
Otherwise it was a steady if not remarkable weekend, with all the big Oscar nominees earning money but none of them really breaking out. At this point it seems a sure thing that the only best picture nominee to top $100 million will be “The Help,” which did so months ago.
The week’s top 10:
“Chronicle” — $22 million, $22 million cumulative
“The Woman in Black” — $21 million, $21 million
“The Grey” — $9.5 million, $34.7 million
“Big Miracle” — $8.5 million, $8.5 million
“Underworld Awakening” — $5.6 million, $54.3 million
“One for the Money” — $5.2 million, $19.6 million
“Red Tails” — $5 million, $41.3 million
“The Descendants” — $4.6 million, $65.5 million
“Man on a Ledge” — $4.5 million, $14.7 million
“Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close” — $3.9 million, $26.7 million.
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