Underworld Awakening Tops The US Box Office

Despite a critical drubbing and worries about franchise fatigue, Underworld Awakening has fought through to top the US box office in its first weekend, taking a respectable $25.4 million. That’s a little ahead on Underworld: Rise Of The Lycans, although that movie didn’t have Kate Beckinsale or a boost from premium price 3D ticket sales.

Red Tails also got off to a stronger start than many had expected, with the George Lucas produced movie taking $19.1 million. Although not amazing, many saw it as a very risky venture, with Lucas funding the entire project himself because no studio would touch a WWII movie with an all-black cast. Although the film’s still got a long way to go to make Lucas back his $70 million plus, it’s on the right track.

Doing less well was the expansion of Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, which went from a few screens to over 2,000, but only took $10.5 million. While that wouldn’t be too bad for most dramas, it makes it the least attended movie for either Tom Hanks or Sandra Bullock in 15 years. However with bad reviews and a marketing campaign that never seemed certain what the movie was, it’s perhaps not surprising the movie has faltered.

The only other new entry was Haywire, which took fifth spot with $9 million. That’s about in line with several other female oriented action movies, such as Hanna, but it’s not a great start. It doesn’t help that despite seeming to go down okay with the critics, audiences coming out of screenings don’t seem to like it much, and so word of mouth is likely to be lousy.

Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend on January 20th-22nd.