Although Martin Luther King Day is a four day weekend in the US, it isn’t one of the particularly big holidays for cinema-going. That said, the Mark Wahlberg starring Contraband did pretty well, scoring a $28.8 million debut to top the chart.
It beat out the 3D re-release of Beauty and The Beast, which made $23.5 million. Although not as big as the opening of The Lion King a few months ago, considering that the film (including the 3D version) has been available to buy of DVD and Blu-ray for ages – unlike Lion King – it’s a pretty impressive take.
The only other new entry was the Dolly Parton and Queen Latifah starring Joyful Noise, which took the number four spot with $13.7 million. Outside the top 10, The Iron Lady got a big boost when it expanded from five to 800 screens, taking $6.4 million and finishing in 11th place on the chart.
Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of January 13th-16th:
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
| 1 | Contraband | $28.8 | $28.8 |
| 2 | Beauty and the Beast | $23.5 | $23.5 |
| 3 | Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol | $14.2 | $189.5 |
| 4 | Joyful Noise | $13.7 | $13.7 |
| 5 | Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows | $10.5 | $172.1 |
| 6 | The Devil Inside | $9.1 | $47.5 |
| 7 | The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo | $8.1 | $89.2 |
| 8 | Alvin & the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked | $7.8 | $120.8 |
| 9 | War Horse | $7.1 | $67.3 |
| 10 | We Bought A Zoo | $6.8 | $65.2 |
Paramount’s decision to set up a unit to make and purchase micro-budget genre movies for under a million dollars certainly seems to be paying off. They decided on the strategy following the success of Paranormal Activity, and with The Devil Inside it’s working far better than they expected.
If the studios were hoping for some four-day holiday New Year’s cheer at the box office, they didn’t get a huge amount, with Mission: Impossible Ghost Protocol the only real bright spot. The overall box office was down over last New Year, but Ghost Protocol added another $38 million to take its total to $14 million in the US and $361 million worldwide. It’s a decent hit but not astounding.
The Christmas US box office is slightly unusual, as while it was a holiday four-day weekend, rather than releasing movie on a Friday, many of the studios decided to either release their movie early or wait until Christmas itself, largely because they now Christmas Eve always tends to be an unsually weak day (whereas Saturday is normally the best day of the week). The result is that while some of these new films movies got off to decent starts, they couldn’t beat out previously released flicks.
If Hollywood was hoping for a little pre-Christmas cheer, it didn’t get much over the weekend, after disappointing debuts for two movies there’d been high hopes for. Sherlock Holmes: A Game Of Shadows topped the chart with $40 million, more than $20 million down on the first movie’s take during Christmas 2009. It’s even lower than Tron: Legacy, which opened to weak reviews this weekend last year.