Weakend Box Office Recap

YOUR WEAKEND BOX OFFICE RECAP: The theatrical box office was surprisingly strong over Super Bowl weekend, up almost 33% from last year, with a pair of overperforming genre films, Fox’s Chronicle and CBS Films’ The Woman In Black topping the tally less than $300k apart, with grosses of $22 million and $21m, respectively, attracting an impressive young audience. The sci-fi thriller Chronicle played on 2,907 theaters, while the Daniel Radcliffe-starring comeback from U.K.’s famed horror studio Hammer Films screened on 2,855. Third place went to last week’s top-finisher, Open Road’s hungry like a wolf movie, The Grey, with Liam Neeson ($9.5 million for a two-week cume of $34.6 million), followed by Universal’s save-the-whale saga, Big Miracle, with John Krasinski and Drew Barrymore, which did a very disappointing $8.1 million, not a great haul for the $40 million production, to finish #4. Rounding out the Top 5 was Sony’s 3D vampire saga, Underworld Awakening, which did $5.5 million in its third week for a cume of $54.3 million. (2/6a)