Weekend Box Office: Pitt and Dominik’s “Killing” opens softly

It wasn’t entirely unexpected that “Killing Them Softly” with Brad Pitt opened poorly at the box office (I predicted the gross within a half a million dollars in this week’s Box Office Beat column), but any time a major movie star’s film tanks in wide release, it’s news. “Killing Them Softly” raked in a measly $7 million for seventh place and, worsening the blow, it scored a rare “F” CinemaScore from audiences, who were apparently expecting something more action-packed, meaning word-of-mouth will be virtually non-existent. Most critics, including our James Frazier, liked the film, but they are clearly not reflective of the mainstream.

Instead, the frame was dominated by holdovers, with the top 5 remaining the exact same as last weekend. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” and “Skyfall” continued their respective marches to $300m, while “Lincoln” came closer to the $100m mark, and “Life of Pi” and “Rise of the Guardians” each neared $50m, still struggling to get off the ground. The only new highlight was the Bollywood pic “Talaash,” which put $2m on the board, for a hefty per-theater-average of $11,529 and a 14th place finish. That’s pretty good, by genre standards.

Check out the full top 10 chart below:

No.	Title	Weekend	Per Theater Average	Total
1	“The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2”	$17.4M	$4,344	$254.6M
2	“Skyfall”	$17.0M	$4,909	$246.0M
3	“Lincoln”	$13.5M	$6,694	$83.7M
4	“Rise of the Guardians”	$13.5M	$3,676	$48.9M
5	“Life of Pi”	$12.0M	$4,098	$48.4M
6	“Wreck-It Ralph”	$7.0M	$2,274	$158.3M
7	“Killing Them Softly”	$7.0M	$2,888	$7.0M
8	“Red Dawn”	$6.6M	$2,355	$31.3M
9	“Flight”	$4.5M	$1,744	$81.5M
10	“The Collection”	$3.4M	$2,430	$3.4M

Source: Box Office Mojo