"Underworld" Awakens the Box Office

The 2012 box office winning streak continued this weekend with Kate Beckinsale’s Underworld, which earned $25.4 million. The film, produced by Sony Pictures, led a weekend which saw an increase in ticket sales by 32% from the same weekend last year. The film also picked up an additional $13.4 million in sales from overseas markets.

George Lucas’s pet project Red Tails, which he financed himself to the tune of $58 million, opened in second place, earning $19.1 million. Though the film was savaged by the critics, it earned respectable word-of-mouth reviews from audiences which helps explain how it did so well this weekend.

Last weekend’s No.1 movie, Contraband, fell to third thanks to a drop of nearly 50% in its total box office receipts. It earned $12.2 million this weekend plus a paltry $1.8 million overseas. Its domestic total comes to $46.1 million since it opened.

And rounding out the top five were Haywire and the 3-D reissue of Disney’s Beauty and the Beast, both of which earned around $9 million.

The top ten films and their domestic earnings were as follows:

1. "Underworld: Awakening”: $25.4 million

2. "Red Tails": $19.1 million

3. "Contraband": $12.2 million

4. "Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close": $10.5 million

5. "Haywire": $9 million

6. "Beauty and the Beast 3-D": $8.6 million

7. "Joyful Noise": $6.1 million

8. "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol": $5.5 million

9. "Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows": $4.8 million

10. "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo": $3.8 million

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