Weekend Box Office: The Rite Does Right, King's Speech Continues Oscar Bump Surge

By Chris Kavan - 01/30/11 at 10:27 PM CT

Looks like American is willing to give exorcisms one more shot as Anthony Hopkins and The Rite took the top spot over the weekend.

With an estimated $15 million, The Rite sat atop the box office, and performed in line with what was expected. Also showing up within expectations was The Mechanic. With Jason Statham and plenty of action, the film wound up tied for third place with The Green Hornet at $11.5 million.

Probably the most impressive film in the top 5 was The King's Speech, which was up a whopping 41% from last week thanks to some great Oscar buzz. The film earned another $11.1 million in 5th and now stands at $72.2 million and insiders now give it the edge over The Social Network for Oscar gold (though you will never convince me).

Other Oscar contenders also held well. True Grit was up 4% in 6th place with $7.6 million for a total of $138 million. Black Swan and The Fighter saw only modest drops winding up in 7th and 8th place with $5.1 and $4.1 million respectively.

Still, total box office attendance is still lagging behind last year when Avatar was still dominating theaters, though the 16% fall looks a bit better than the 30% dip Hollywood has been struggling with since December.

It looks like the best bets for the coming week will be James Cameron, trying to best the box office once again with Sanctum, while The Roommate tries to scare up a willing audience.