Weekend Box Office (01/15/11): Contraband scores surprisingly large debut, Beauty & the Beast plus Joyful Noise open well in 'everybody wins!' MLK weekend.

I've talked a lot about how the under-reported story of 2011 box office was the return to fiscal sanity in regards to production budgets and this weekend is a prime example.  We have three big openers, all of which cost under $30 million, which means all of them are well on their way to profitability merely by posting a solid if-not-spectacular opening.   Shocking all of Mendelson's Memos box office analysts (IE - me), Mark Wahlberg powered the low-budget ($25 million) and R-rated Contraband to a $24 million Fri-Sun/$28 million Fri-Mon debut all by himself to win the weekend.  Wahlberg has had his share of big weekends (Planet of the Apes, The Perfect Storm, The Happening, etc), but they all arguably had larger factors at play other than just Walhberg's relatively limited star-power.  The closest comparison is the 2005 debut of Four Brothers, but I'd argue that at least some of the credit for that $21 million debut goes to director John Singleton, along with the fact that it was hard-R action picture in a PG-13 time.  Comparability, Shooter debuted in early 2007 with $15 million, albeit against the $24 million opening weekend of TMNT and the $19 million third-weekend of 300.  Chalk it up to lack of demo competition, a growing appetite for R-rated genre fare, a token boost from Kate Beckinsale's token fanbase, or something in the marketing that I frankly didn't see, but Walhberg just scored his biggest 'all by myself!' debut of his career.