Joe Carnahan’s The Grey, which stars Liam Neeson, took the weekend box office crown with an estimated $20 million as genre movies propelled the top12 films to a 7% gain over the same frame in 2011.  The “survival in-the wilderness”-themed The Grey overcame its nondescript title and provided another example of Neeson’s growing stature as an action movie hero. 

While he’s not Tom Cruise in MI4, with solid hits like Taken, which was produced for $25 million and made $226 million, and Unknown, which was made for $30 million and earned $130 million worldwide, Neeson has demonstrated that he can carry a major action movie.  A substantial 67% of the opening weekend audience cited the 59-year-old Neeson as the reason they were seeing The Grey.

 

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): January 27 - 29, 2012
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	The Grey	$20,000,000	3,185	$6,279	$20,000,000	1
2	Underworld Awakening	$12,500,000	3,078	$4,061	$45,126,000	2
3	One For the Money	$11,750,000	2,737	$4,293	$11,750,000	1
4	Red Tails	$10,400,000	2,573	$4,042	$33,780,000	2
5	Man on a Ledge	$8,300,000	2,998	$2,769	$8,300,000	1
6	Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close	$7,145,000	2,630	$2,717	$21,106,000	6
7	The Descendants	$6,550,000	2,001	$3,273	$58,848,000	11
8	Contraband	$6,500,000	2,650	$2,453	$56,400,000	3
9	Beauty and the Beast (3D)	$5,345,000	2,145	$2,492	$41,147,000	3
10	Haywire	$4,000,000	2,441	$1,639	$15,279,000	2

 

The audience for the “R”-rated The Grey was 54% male and definitely older (71% was 25 and up).  The Grey earned very strong 79% positive rating from the critics on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, but only an average “B-“ CinemaScore from the opening weekend audience.  It should be interesting to see if The Grey has the kind of “legs” that made Taken and Unknown solid box office performer.

 

Last week’s winner, Underworld Awakening, fell just 50.6%, which represents a solid “hold” for a horror movie.  The film’s $45.1 million ten-day total remains the franchise’s best, but that’s in dollars, not in the number of admissions. 

 

One for the Money, a rare (these days) big screen female “detective” (ok, “bail bond enforcer”) movie, was a surprising third place winner. Starring Katherine Heigl as Janet Evanovich’s Stephanie Plum, One for the Money earned an estimated $11.75 million.  As might be expected, the audience mirrored the readership of Evanovich’s novels—overwhelmingly female (79%) and older (74% over 35, with 36% in the 35-40 age group hereafter known as the “Evanovich wheelhouse”). 

 

Lionsgate promoted One for the Money via a Groupon email blast coupon that reached an estimated 20 million people.  Thirty-four percent of the opening weekend had heard of the offer and 11% had actually bought their tickets via the coupon.  With some 94% of the Groupon users saying that they would not have gone without the coupon, it’s appears that the promotion added about $1 million to the movie’s better-than-expected opening weekend total. 

There is a dark cloud on the film’s horizon however, the opening weekend crowd appeared to have preferred the book—they gave One for the Money a below-average “B-“ CinemaScore.

 

Right behind One for the Money was the George Lucas-produced Red Tails, the Tuskegee Airmen saga, which fell just 45% and earned an estimated $10.4 million, which brings its ten-day total to $33.8 million.

 

Coming in fifth, with an estimated $8.3 million, was the thriller Man on a Ledge, a film that many thought would be locked in a close contest with The Grey for box office supremacy.  The movie’s somewhat perplexing TV ad campaign obscured rather than touted the high concept caper film’s narrative, and opening in a market that is currently saturated with genre and action films didn’t help either, not when audiences could just as easily opt for the simple pleasure of a “sure thing” like watching Liam Neeson fight wolves.  The good news for Man on a Ledge is that even though it drew a disappointingly small audience, at least the crowd, which was evenly split between the genders and young (56% under 25), actually liked the film, giving it a “B+” CinemaScore.

 

The Oscar nominations were out this week (see “Hugo Gets 11 Oscar Nods”), and Oscar bumps went to Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which dropped just 28.9% in its sixth week, as well as to Hugo (up 142.6%) and The Artist (up 39.8%), which both added theaters and posted gains, though it should be noted that neither Hugo nor The Artist made the Top 10 this weekend.

 

Stop back here again next week to see what happens when new films including the superhero-themed Chronicle, the Daniel Radcliffe-starring horror film The Woman in Black, W.E., the Madonna-directed saga about a woman obsessed with Edward the VIII’s abdication, and Big Miracle, the heartwarming true story of volunteers who manage to save a family of gray whales trapped by ice all vie for box office supremacy.