The fourth installment of the Underworld saga opened as the number one movie in America yesterday with $9.4 million, putting Awakening on par with the franchise’s predecessors. Probably more shocking though is the performance of the runner-up, Red Tails–a George Lucas-directed film about African American pilots in World War II. Hollywood did not have a whole lot of faith in it, especially with the lackluster reviews, but audiences pushed this one further than it was expected to go with a $6 million Friday.
As for the rest of the field, there was nothing too exciting to report. Beauty and the Beast 3D dropped 62% to $2.1 million for the day week-to-week, but the re-release is really just a profit machine for Disney as the studio was already working on Beast and others for Blu-Ray 3D prior to the discovery that they can bank a lot of cash at the box office as well after Lion King exploded. Translation: Drop-offs do not matter as long as the movie debuts north of a $10 million weekend which it did. Also, Haywire nearly passed $3 million on Friday which is pretty acceptable for the Steven Soderbergh film.