The crowd-pleasing, critically-acclaimed Coen brothers western remake/adaptation True Grit took the box office crown in its third weekend of release, setting itself up as a major Oscar contender. The Jeff Bridges/Hailee Steinfeld vehicle grossed $14.6 million in its third weekend, dropping a reasonable 40%. The post-holiday weekends usually see hefty drops, so this isn't anything to be concerned about. What is impressive is that, in its third weekend, True Grit has a Fri-Sun amount right on par with the opening weekends of recent (justifiably) acclaimed westerns such as 3:10 to Yuma and Open Range, both of which opened with $14 million within the last seven years. The (slightly overrated) film crossed the $100 million mark on Saturday, and ended day 19 with $110 million. That makes it the third-biggest grossing western in domestic history, behind the sci-fi tinged Wild Wild West ($113 million) and the revisionist epic Dances with Wolves ($184 million). It is also now the highest-grossing picture amongst the Oscar-bait contenders this year, although probably nominees Inception ($292 million) and Toy Story 3 ($415 million) are obviously out of reach. Alas, unless you only count pure traditional westerns, most of these genre-related box office records will likely fall when Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens (trailer) is released this summer.
