Darren Aronofsky's ballet-themed sexual thriller "Black Swan" enjoyed one of the more impressive openings of the ongoing specialty-film season, grossing an estimated $1.4 million at 18 locations, according to studio estimates.
The R-rated Fox Searchlight-distributed film, which stars Natalie Portman and Mila Kunis as ballerina rivals/lovers, yielded an impressive $77,459-per-screen average to best a flurry of awards-aspiring releases this weekend that also included Roadside Attractions' "I Love You, Phillip Morris" and Magnolia's "All Good Things."
On the big-movie side of things, business was as moribund as expected, with Disney's 3D-animated "Tangled" winning an overall box office that was down 13 percent year-to-year with a $21.5 million performance.
Typically, the week after Thanksgiving yields the biggest week-to-week drop in domestic box-office revenue, and this weekend was no exception.
Only one new film opened wide — martial-arts Western "Warrior's Way," a $42 million indie film being distributed by Relativity under service deal — and it flopped, enduring the worst opening this year for a film debuting in more than 1,000 theaters.
The R-rated movie, which stars Kate Bosworth and Korean action hero Dong-gun Jang, grossed an estimated $3.1 million, missing soft pre-release projections of around $5 million.
Moviegoers simply didn't like the movie, with word-of-mouth tracker Cinemascore grading "Warrior's Way" with a C-minus, one of the worst grades of the year.
Here's a look at the top 10 at the domestic box office. Report continues below chart:
Warner's seventh "Harry Potter" movie, "The Deathly Hallows Part 1," finished second, grossing $16.7 million and bringing its North American gross to $244.2 million.
The last "Potter" installment — last year's "Half-Blood Prince" — had only around $221 million over the same 12-day period. It was, however, a July release, so the comparison is a little apples to oranges.
Sony's $55 million Cher/Christina Aguilera musical finished in third place with $6.1 million and has now grossed $27 million after two weekends in release.
Meanwhile, continuing to hold up well, Fox's Denzel Washington train movie "Unstoppable tied for third with $6.1 million and has now grossed $68.9 million in the U.S. and Canada.
As for "Tangled," Disney also reported $26 million in international grosses over the weekend, putting the movie's two-week global total at $142.3 million.
On the specialty-film side, the well-reviewed "Black Swan" became the "Harry Potter"-sized tentpole that rivals planned around.
"We think we came through with shining colors as the underdog to 'Black Swan,' and in a crowded marketplace we got the film open," noted Roadside Attractions co-president Howard Cohen, referring to "I Love You, Phillip Morris'" $113,200 gross plaing at six theaters in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco.
The much-anticipated "Phillip Morris" — a based-on-a-true-story comedy about gay con men starring Jim Carrey and Ewan McGregor and held up in a distribution dispute for much of the last year — averaged $18,886 per screen.
Magnolia, meanwhile, opened its Ryan Gosling wife-killer biopic "All Good Things" on two screens (the Paris and Angelica) in the town the film is set, Manhattan, grossing $40,000.
The film has already been one of Magnolia's most successful VOD offerings.
