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Carrey and 'Christmas Carol' to top weekend at box office, but 'Precious' is an indie gift
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Jim Carrey & "A Christmas Carol" ushered in the Holiday Film Season, but "Precious" was a real gift.
This week's debut of "Disney's A Christmas Carol" kicked off the Holiday Film season with plenty of cheer in an especially packed box office weekend. Names, names, names like Jim Carrey, George Clooney and Cameron Diaz gave local marquees plenty of luster. However, it was the debut of indie drama "Precious" that proved the real gift, kicking up its awards buzz for Mo'Nique and newcomer Gabourey Sidibe (pictured below) several notches.
Audiences took their Dickens in digital 3D animation well, with "A Christmas Carol" earning $9 million on its opening day from 3,683 locations. With a voice cast led Carrey as both Ebenezer Scrooge and the tale's iconic ghosts, families played a key role in propelling the film to lead the Friday Night Five.
"A Christmas Carol" was just one of the four new films successfully posting Top Five debuts. Second place went to the fact-based alien abduction thriller "The Fourth Kind" starring Milla Jovovich, which earned $5 million off 2,527 sites. Overture Films' poli com "The Men Who Stare at Goats" with Clooney landed in third with $4.6 million from 2,443 theaters. Last week's global thriller "Michael Jackson's This Is It" dropped from first place to fourth with $4.15 million in its second Friday, down 47% for a domestic cume of $48 million. And it was a race for fifth between Warner's "The Box" and Paramount's "Paranormal Activity," with both studio's reporting an estimated $2.85 million. In the meantime, "Paranormal" raised its box office fortune to $91.7 million as it starts its seventh weekend.
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But, leave it to Lionsgate's limited bow of "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire" to garner the best average of the weekend. The acclaimed Lee Daniels-directed urban drama posted a record $585,000 from 18 theaters, the best for any film released in under 100 locations. With a sensational per screen average of $32,500, industry pundits are wagiing that it could reach an astonishing $100,000 average for the entire weekend.
For more on the Friday Night Five, including ticket and theater information, click on Fandango.
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