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Is There Such a Thing as an Oscar-Nomination Curse?

Sun., Jan. 30, 2011 12:40 PM PST by Joal Ryan

Egon Endrenyi/ New Line Cinema

You've heard of the Best Actress Oscar curse: the one that jinxes your marriage.

But have you heard of the Best Actress Oscar nomination curse: the one that jinxes your movie?

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Natalie Portman's Black Swan, nominated for five Oscars last week, including Best Picture and Best Actress, sure seemed to have fallen prey to dark forces at the box office, as the film suffered its first down weekend in more than two months of release.

But the truth is the movie was hardly "cursed" by success.

For one thing, the $13 million thriller broke $90 million overally domestically.

For another thing, Portman's other movie, No Strings Attached, was down a whole lot more, and it wasn't nominated for anything.

And for one last thing, the other Best Actress nominees with films still in theaters—that would be Michelle Williams (Blue Valentine) and Nicole Kidman (Rabbit Hole)—both enjoyed Oscar bumps.

So no need to rue the nomination. All Portman, Williams and Kidman have to worry about is what might happen if they should—uh-oh!—win.

Elsewhere, the title of No. 1 movie in the land was sold on the cheap to the Anthony Hopkins exorcism flick, The Rite, which got it for a mere $15 million, per estimates.

The King's Speech got a big Oscar bounce to go with its haul of Oscar nominations: it was up more than 40 percent from last weekend.

Among the other Best Picture hopefuls, True Grit got a minor bump (up 4 percent), The Fighter sustained a minor cut (down 3 percent) and 127 Hours was up a ton (more than 1,600 percent), but still couldn't quite get back into the Top 10—or, to look at things from the bright side, its studio almost convinced enough people watch James Franco saw off his arm.

Here's the rundown of the top-grossing films, per Friday-Sunday numbers as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

1. The Rite, $15 million
2. No Strings Attached, $13.7 million
3. The Mechanic, $11.5 million (tie)
3.The Green Hornet, $11.5 million (tie)
5. The King's Speech, $11.1 million
6. True Grit, $7.6 million
7. The Dilemma, $5.5 million
8. Black Swan, $5.1 million
9. The Fighter, $4.1 million
10. Yogi Bear, $3.2 million