Weekend Box Office (01/09/11): True Grit takes the lead, while Season of the Witch, Country Strong lead off 2011.

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.

Weekend Box Office (01/02/11): Little Fockers, True Grit dominate New Year's weekend, family films stay above water.

As is usually the case for New Year's weekend, there are no new wide releases, leaving the field for holdover domination and a couple smaller pictures to make a last-minute Oscar-qualifying limited opening. Little Fockers once again topped the box office over the weekend, although it was much closer than expected. The big news was the incredible staying power of True Grit, which dropped just 1.7% from last weekend's terrific opening sprint. The critically-acclaimed Coen brothers western grossed another $24.4 million, compared to last weekend's $24.8 million opening three-day haul. Drops like that are generally reserved for the likes of Avatar and The Sixth Sense. With $86.6 million in twelve days, the film is easily the highest-grossing picture for the Coens. The film is obviously playing like a general audiences smash and has become a front-runner at this year's Oscars. It is also on track to crack $100 million in the next week or so, and it will easily surpass the $113 million gross of Wild, Wild West to become the second-highest grossing western in US history, behind the $184 million haul of Dances with Wolves. Oscar win or no Oscar win, this is a huge and genre-reviving triumph for everyone involved.

Goodbye to You: Franchises That Left Us This Year.

While every year brings its share of would-be franchise starters, 2010 marked the would-be finale for a surprisingly large number of ongoing series. Here is a rundown, in alphabetical order, of the film franchises that were either officially cancelled, fittingly finished out their arc, or likely will not return based on lackluster box office numbers. I have no idea how to make music play when you click on a blog entry, but feel free to boot up your favorite farewell song. Me? I'm currently playing Elton John's Candle in the Wind (the original, not that wet-fart 1997 remake).

The Chronicles of Narnia (12/09/2005-12/12/2010)
In the aftermath of the one-two punch of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Fellowship of the Ring in late 2001, studios all went digging for various fantasy-lit series to turn into their own long-running franchises. Of the many would-be contenders, only two of them received a sequel. The Twilight Saga will be ending in 2012, but this year we likely said goodbye to the only other notable contender, The Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe debuted in December 2005 to an earth-shattering $65 million, completely knocking the wind out of King Kong, which debuted a week later. Spurred by a major Disney ad blitz that highlighted major big-budget fantasy spectacle which was based on a book that pretty much everyone read in elementary school, plus an 'on the side' ad campaign based on the book's (and author C.S. Lewis's) well-known Christianity, the film was the first fantasy-lit film post-2001 to really hit it big. It ended its leggy run with $290 million domestic and $745 million worldwide. But the first book was really the only popular one in the series.

Weekend Box Office (12/26/10): Little Fockers opens soft, True Grit opens strong, Tron: Legacy flounders.

I remember being genuinely shocked at the success of Meet the Fockers back in Christmas 2004. It had been well over four years since the original and, box office aside, it wasn't a film that cried out for a sequel. I figured that no one cared, that it had been too long since the original, and that the sequel would do token business but no more. For the second time in 2004, I was dead-wrong. Twice that year, sequels that didn't have all that much pre-release buzz around them exploded out of the gate and kept going for the next few months. The other was Shrek 2, which opened out of nowhere on the pre-Memorial Day weekend to $108 million over three days and $128 million over five, to end up winning the year with an astonishing $441 million. Meet the Fockers grossed $46 million over the three-day portion of Christmas 2004 and a stunning $70 million in its five-day opening weekend. The film kept on rolling, ending up with $279 million domestic and $516 million worldwide. That makes Meet the Fockers the second-biggest live-action comedy in US history (behind Home Alone with $281 million) and the world's highest-grossing live-action comedy ever. So when I say that there wasn't all that much buzz for Little Fockers, that really didn't mean much in theory. Except this time, when it did.

Wednesday Box Office: Little Fockers opens soft(ish), True Grit and Tron: Legacy battle for number two.

Little Fockers was number one at the box office over the first day of the five-day Christmas holiday. But it was a much tighter race than expected, as True Grit held its own and Tron: Legacy remained steady. Little Fockers, the much-unanticipated finale to Fockers trilogy ('This Christmas... the journey ends.'), debuted with $7.2 million. By any normal standards, this would be a solid Wednesday debut for a comedy. But Meet the Fockers (a film that wasn't insanely anticipated either six long years ago) opened its Christmas long-weekend with $12.2 million. That film, which had much better reviews, ended up with $70 million by the end of the long weekend, or a 5.7x weekend multiplier. Should Little Fockers follow suit, it will end the long-weekend with $41 million, or about $5 million less that Meet the Fockers made in the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend.

What may keep me out of theaters in 2011? Instant 'Extended' DVD versions.

The Wolfman, Salt, Knight and Day, The A-Team, and The Town. What do these films have in common? Not too much, except I saw all of them in theaters, all on my own dime and (more importantly) on my own time. I enjoyed The A-Team and kinda-sorta liked Knight and Day and Salt. But the one constant is that they all came to DVD/Blu Ray with extensive 'Extended Edition/Director's Cut' versions. The whole 'unrated/extended cut' thing has been around since the beginning of DVD. Usually it amounts to an R-rated comedy (Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, The Hangover, Role Models, etc) or horror film (every single Saw picture) tossing in three minutes of 'extreme' material that could have allegedly gotten the film an NC-17. But this recent wave is different. These are old-fashioned action pictures and star-vehicles, the kind that are allegedly struggling to find an audience, yet they are consistently mocking their theatrical audiences by unleashing more substantial versions on the home video platform just months after theatrical release.