Weekend Box-Office: November 18-20, 2011

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

The Twilight Saga continues to be huge!

Perhaps the only surprise this weekend was that THE TWILIGHT SAGA: BREAKING DAWN (PART 1) didn’t end up being the biggest opening in the franchise (NEW MOON kicked off with $142.7M), but its 3-day take of $139.5 million is still a healthy bite of box office. It might get a boost from the upcoming holiday and repeat viewings, but the series does tend to plunge in its second week as the core audience has already mobbed the theaters on opening day (half that BREAKING DAWN take was just from Friday).

And also as expected, it was kind of a wasteland for the rest of the movies in release. The only other new contender was HAPPY FEET TWO, and those penguins danced into second place with just $22 million (only 2/3rds of what I had predicted). Looks like there isn’t too much interest remaining in the cute and chilly CG creatures, but it wasn’t because the family crowds were still heading to PUSS IN BOOTS — the cat competitor was down in fifth with just over $10M.

IMMORTALS got hacked down to just $12.3M (a drop of 62%) and a $53M overall, meaning Relativity’s stylish god-war obviously won’t see anything close to the success of 300 ($210M total), which it was clearly emulating. And somehow there are still Americans who want to see Adam Sandler in drag, and so JACK AND JILL made another $12M.

The only other notable occurrence on this week’s chart is that George Clooney’s drama THE DESCENDANTS managed to sneak into 10th place, despite only playing on 29 screens. With an array of solid reviews, it’s probable that George will hang around for a while as the movie goes wider and picks up awards buzz. It doesn’t seem as likely that J. EDGAR will stay around long, but A VERY HAROLD & KUMAR CHRISTMAS might get a little love from people in the holiday spirit this upcoming weekend.

A new trio of Wednesday openings will battle for the eyeballs of families gathering for feasts: THE MUPPETS, ARTHUR CHRISTMAS and HUGO. For something a little more adult, there will also be a few intriguing films in limited release, including David Cronenberg’s A DANGEROUS METHOD, THE ARTIST, MY WEEK WITH MARILYN and RAMPART. Do you plan on hitting the theater on Thanksgiving? VOTE HERE!