Act of Valor Storms the Box Office

While megawatt movie stars from around the world descended upon the Kodak Theatre yesterday for the 84th annual Oscars, the weekend saw moviegoers across the country descend upon their own local theaters in droves to see Act of Valor.

Starring real-life Navy SEALs, the action film pulled in a (much) higher than expected opening weekend gross of $24.7 million. The film beat out the second place finisher, Tyler Perry’s Good Deeds (weekend gross $16 million), by a substantial margin.

The rest of the top five—Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (weekend gross $13.4 million, total gross $76.7 million), Safe House (weekend gross $11.3 million, total gross $98 million) and The Vow (weekend gross $10 million, total gross $103 million)—were all holdovers from last week.

Besides Act of Valor and Good Deeds, the new films to hit theaters in wide release last weekend were Wanderlust (weekend gross $6.6 million) and Gone (weekend gross $5 million), both of which seriously underperformed.

New limited releases included The Forgiveness of Blood ($27,100) and Tomorrow, When the War Began ($4,800). Also out in limited release, though this time only in Canada, was the R-rated hockey comedy Goon. The film earned $1.2 million over the weekend and is set to earn more when its limited U.S. release commences on March 30th.

Wildly different wide releases Dr. Seuss’ The Lorax (Dr. Seuss! Environmentalism! Zac Efron!) and Project X (Underage drinking! Pyromania! Teen sex!) will be duking it out over box office supremacy next weekend. Meanwhile, limited releases will include This Is Not a Film, Boy, Being Flynn, Around June, Black Butterflies, The Salt of Life, Let the Bullets Fly, The Snowtown Murders, Art is….The Permanent Revolution and Tim and Eric’s Billion Dollar Movie. MM