Disney is enjoying its best box-office performance for a hand-drawn animated feature in about a decade, with “The Princess and the Frog” leading in domestic ticket sales with an estimated $25 million this weekend while expanding into 3,434 theaters, according to studio estimates.
Disney’s best traditionally animated result since 2000’s “Dinosaur” also garnered a rare “A” CinemaScore grade.
Meanwhile, not even its own studio can slow down the seemingly tireless legs of “The Blind Side,” with the Sandra Bullock football film declining only 25 percent from its third weekend, taking in another $15.5 million to bring its four-week domestic total to $150.2 million.
The big “Blind Side” performance overshadowed the premiere of another Warner sports movie, the Clint Eastwood-directed South African rugby/post-Apartheid-era film “Invictus,” which came in even below modest pre-release estimates at $9.1 million.
Meanwhile, with Paramount opening it in only three theaters, Peter Jackson’s “The Lovely Bones” took in $43,000. And Weinstein’s Tom Ford directorial debut “A Single Man” made $62,000 at nine locations.
So it went amid an overall box office that was down about 2 percent from last week’s tepid post-Thanksgiving weekend total, but was up 5 percent from the same weekend a year prior.
For his part, Warner distribution president Dan Fellman said he expected “Blind Side” to drop about 40 percent week to week, and has now adjusted his end-game domestic projection for the Alcon Entertainment-produced film from $200 million to the 
$220 million/$230 million range.
“It’s reached a much broader audience now,” Fellman said. “It’s playing really well in small towns, for instance. It’s just got a head of steam on it.”
Fellman insists that steam wasn’t taken away this weekend from “Invictus,” a $60 million movie starring Morgan Freeman and Matt Damon, that like pretty much everything else released this time of year, is vying for awards attention.
“ 'Invictus' is playing to a totally different crowd,” said Fellman, noting that 69 percent of its audience is age 30 or older -- an audience demographic that "Blind Side" has long since broadened out of, he insisted. “The reviews are outstanding, and so is the word of mouth. Results-wise, the movie falls into the same area as ‘Mystic River’ and ‘Million Dollar Baby.’”
However, unlike “Invictus,” both of those previous Eastwood-directed films first enjoyed a successful limited release window, before expanding to a greater box office total ($10.4 million for 2003’s “Mystic River” and $12.3 million for 2004’s “Million Dollar Baby’).
Still, Fellman noted, “We’re pleased with this opening. With the Golden Globes coming up and all the year-end accolades, I think we’re well positioned to come into the lucrative Christmas holiday with $20 million already in our pockets.”
Meanwhile, finishing in fourth place while declining 50 percent from its third weekend, Summit Entertainment’s “Twilight Saga: New Moon” took in another $8 million to bring its four-week domestic total to $267.4 million. With foreign total tabulation still pending, "New Moon" is looking to pass the $600 million mark globally by the end of the weekend.
