CBS FilmsLife after Harry Potter is looking good for Daniel Radcliffe.
Radcliffe's The Woman in Black grossed a scary-good $21 million, per estimates, and gave Chronicle a run for the No. 1 spot in the weekend box-office standings.
Drew Barrymore's slump, meanwhile, continued.
Woman in Black, Radcliffe's first post-Potter film since the world's most-successful franchise folded last summer, is already in the black, having made its money off a reported $13 million budget.
The gothic, haunted-house tale did OK with critics, too, netting mostly positive reviews in the estimations of Rotten Tomatoes and Metacritic.
In another solid weekend for Hollywood, Chronicle got even better reviews, and made even more money ($22 million) off an even-smaller budget ($12 million).
The no-star, Zapped-gone-bad sci-fi action movie scored with younger audiences, in general, and men, in particular.
Barrymore's $40 million-ish Big Miracle, meanwhile, debuted in fourth place, with an estimated $8.5 million Friday-Sunday take.
The whale movie marks the actress' third-straight, subpar box-office performance. On the upside, its performance did improve on the openings of Going the Distance and Everybody's Fine.
Overall, multiplexes continued to recover from last year's downturn. Ticket sales were up a whopping 33 percent for the same Super Bowl weekend last year, Exhibitor Relations estimated.
Elsewhere, in their second, post-coupon-sale weekends, Katherine Heigl's One for the Money and Sam Worthington's Man on a Ledge held up OK, even as they dropped three spots and four spots, respectively, in the rankings. (And, by the by, bargain shoppers, those coupons are good for as long as the movies are in theaters.)
Oscar movies continued to be non-factors, although George Clooney's The Descendants did hit the $65 million mark domestically.
After a brief, and, as it turned out, fruitless Oscar-qualifying run, Madonna's W.E. was back in theaters—and just in time for its director's Super Bowl halftime show. The timing and/or the movie worked as the biopic-hybrid grossed more money per theater ($11,250 off each of its four screens) than just about any other movie in rerelease.
Here's the rundown of the weekend's top movies, as compiled from the studios' Friday-Sunday domestic estimates and Exhibitor Relations stats:
- Chronicle, $22 million
- The Woman in Black, $21 million
- The Grey, $9.5 million
- Big Miracle, $8.5 million
- Underworld Awakening, $5.6 million
- One for the Money, $5.3 million
- Red Tails, $5 million
- The Descendants, $4.6 million
- Man on a Ledge, $4.5 million
- Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, $3.9 million
(Originally published at 9:27 a.m. PT on Feb. 5, 2012.)