It wasn’t entirely unexpected that “Killing Them Softly” with Brad Pitt opened poorly at the box office (I predicted the gross within a half a million dollars in this week’s Box Office Beat column), but any time a major movie star’s film tanks in wide release, it’s news. “Killing Them Softly” raked in a measly $7 million for seventh place and, worsening the blow, it scored a rare “F” CinemaScore from audiences, who were apparently expecting something more action-packed, meaning word-of-mouth will be virtually non-existent. Most critics, including our James Frazier, liked the film, but they are clearly not reflective of the mainstream.
Instead, the frame was dominated by holdovers, with the top 5 remaining the exact same as last weekend. “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” and “Skyfall” continued their respective marches to $300m, while “Lincoln” came closer to the $100m mark, and “Life of Pi” and “Rise of the Guardians” each neared $50m, still struggling to get off the ground. The only new highlight was the Bollywood pic “Talaash,” which put $2m on the board, for a hefty per-theater-average of $11,529 and a 14th place finish. That’s pretty good, by genre standards.
Check out the full top 10 chart below:
| No. | Title | Weekend | Per Theater Average | Total |
| 1 | “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2” | $17.4M | $4,344 | $254.6M |
| 2 | “Skyfall” | $17.0M | $4,909 | $246.0M |
| 3 | “Lincoln” | $13.5M | $6,694 | $83.7M |
| 4 | “Rise of the Guardians” | $13.5M | $3,676 | $48.9M |
| 5 | “Life of Pi” | $12.0M | $4,098 | $48.4M |
| 6 | “Wreck-It Ralph” | $7.0M | $2,274 | $158.3M |
| 7 | “Killing Them Softly” | $7.0M | $2,888 | $7.0M |
| 8 | “Red Dawn” | $6.6M | $2,355 | $31.3M |
| 9 | “Flight” | $4.5M | $1,744 | $81.5M |
| 10 | “The Collection” | $3.4M | $2,430 | $3.4M |
Source: Box Office Mojo