Texas Chainsaw 3D was the surprise No. 1 film at the weekend box office due to, in part, its surprise draw: Trey Songz.
Exit polling showed one in three moviegoers cited the singer, making his first turn in a major movie, as the horror remake's main attraction,
Django Unchained and Les Misérables meanwhile, both zoomed to $100 million domestically, while Matt Damon's Promised Land struggled to crack the Top 10.
Texas Chainsaw 3D goes down as the second-biggest opening Texas Chainsaw movie. Its bigger-than-expected estimated $23 million Friday-Sunday take was driven by presumably Songz-taken females, who made up more than half of the opening-weekend audience. About the only game the movie didn't win was the Cinemascore one—per the polling company, the film was graded just a C-plus by moviegoers.
In its second weekend, Django ($20.1 million) held strong, and held onto second place in the weekend standings. Overall, the Quentin Tarantino Oscar hopeful is now at $106.4 million stateside.
Les Mis ($16.1 million) cracked $100 million nearly as fast as Django, 13 days to the latter's 12 days. No movie musical has ever gotten to nine digits as quickly.
Elsewhere, Promised Land went wide, but didn't impress with a $4.3 million take from more than 1,600 screens.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which had its run at No. 1 ended after three weekends, dropped to third place, but picked up another $17.5 million and upped its domestic haul to $263.8 million.
Billy Crystal's and Bette Midler's Parental Guidance ($10.1 million; $52.8 million overall domestically) continued to school fellow holiday-season comediesThis Is 40 and The Guilt Trip.
Outside of the Top 10, two awards-season contenders impressed. The controversy-courting Zero Dark Thirty put up a big $2.8 million from just 60 theaters, while Naomi Watts' The Impossible ($2.8 million) averaged a solid $4,825 from its 500-plus theaters.
Overall, the first weekend of 2013 was just about even with the first weekend of 2012.
Here's a complete look at the weekend's top movies, per studio estimates and stats as compiled per Hollywood.com:
- Texas Chainsaw 3D, $23 million
- Django Unchained, $20.1 million
- The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, $17.5 million
- Les Misérables, $16.1 million
- Parental Guidance, $10.1 million
- Jack Reacher, $9.3 million
- This is 40, $8.6 million
- Lincoln, $5.3 million
- The Guilt Trip, $4.5 million
- Promised Land, $4.3 million