Paramount was so worried about its No Strings Attached being a stinker that the studio didn't even bother to give me a pre-release briefing. ("You know I only like to write these notes after the film works. I'd rather you beat me up for no email than a flop!" an exec at the studio emailed me by way of explanation.") I don't necessarily blame them: any movie starring Ashton Kutcher is probably a bomb since his last one -- PG-13 Killers with Katherine Heigl -- opened to only $15.8M for Lionsgate. And rom-coms, especially sexy R-rated ones (Ed Zwick's Love And Other Drugs which opened to only $9.7M for Fox with Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal) have been stillborn at the North American box office with this caliber of star. This $25 million-cost movie started out as a Black List script originally titled Fuckbuddies and written by Elizabeth Merriwether. Natalie Portman came on board as a producer and star for Ivan Reitman and Tom Pollock's The Montecito Picture Company, which co-financed in partnership with Coldspring and Paramount's usual partner Spyglass Entertainment.
Natalie is hot after her Oscar-worthy transformative performance in Black Swan and now finds herself with 2 movies in this weekend's Top 6. And perhaps risking overexposure because of her new pics opening in January, February, April, and May. Anyway, the pic took advantage of being the only wide opening this weekend and may hang on for $20M. (Remember, it took Ron Howard's Dilemma starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James 4 days to even make that over the MLK long holiday.) The film had been tracking strong with 20-year-old females whom Paramount pursued aggresively not with traditional newspaper ads but instead with a big Facebook push of a sexy Red Band trailer. Meanwhile, Sony's The Green Hornet 3D and Universal's aforementioned Dilemma look to drop less than -50% this weekend. Here's the Top 10:
1. No Strings Attached (Paramount) NEW [3,018 Theaters]
Friday $7.3M, Estimated Weekend $20M
2. The Green Hornet 3D (Sony) Week 2 [3,584 Theaters]
Friday $5.2M (-53%), Estimated Weekend $17M, Estimated Cume $62.3M
3. Dilemma (Universal) Week 2 [2,943 Theaters]
Friday $3M, (-51%), Estimated Weekend $10M, Estimated Cume $33.5M
4. The King's Speech (Weinstein Co) Week 9 [1,680 Theaters]
Friday $2M, Estimated Weekend $7M, Estimated Cume $56.5M
5. True Grit (Paramount) Week 5 [3,464 Theaters]
Friday $2M, Estimated Weekend $6.7M, Estimated Cume $137.3M
6. Black Swan (Fox Searchlight) Week 8 [2,407 Theaters]
Friday $1.7M, Estimated Weekend $5.7M, Estimated Cume $83M
7. Little Fockers (Universal) Week 5 [2,979 Theaters]
Friday $1.2M, Estimated Weekend $4M, Estimated Cume $140.8M
8. The Fighter (Relativity/Paramount) Week 6 [2,275 Theaters]
Friday $1.2M, Estimated Weekend $4M, Estimated Cume $72.5M
9. Tron: The Legacy 3D (Disney) Week 7 [2,018 Theaters]
Friday $975K, Estimated Weekend $3.5M, Estimated Cume $163M
10. Yogi Bear 3D (Warner Bros) Week 6 [2,510 Theaters]
Friday $750K, Estimated Weekend $3.5M, Estimated Cume $88.3M
From Deadline: Source
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