Good but not great would have to be the reaction to The Green Hornet’s opening weekend. The film’s $34 million three-day US haul was actually the biggest ever for a live action superhero comedy, but even so, with strong tracking many had wondered whether the movie might turning into a much bigger hit.
Despite it okay but not astounding debut, Green Hornet was the bright spot in a very soft Martin Luther King weekend, which saw the Vince Vaughn comedy the Dilemma underperform, taking less than expected with $17.4 million. That’s about half what Vaughn’s comedies have been doing recently, and a lot less than most of director Ron Howard’s mainstream work has been doing recently (ignoring limited released for the likes of Frost/Nixon and A Beuatiful Mind).
The rest of the top 10 were holdovers, and as they’ve had relatively weak box office power in the weeks running up until now (there’s certainly been nothing like Avatar this year, which singlehandedly held the box office high between Christmas and the March release of Alice In Wonderland – although True Grit’s still doing better than expected), it’s actually been the worst attended MLK weekends at the cinemas for over a decade.
Take a look below for the US box office top 10 for the weekend of January 14th-16th, 2011.
| Rank | Title | Weekend Gross (millions) | Total Gross to date (millions) |
| 1 | The Green Hornet | $34.0 | $34.0 |
| 2 | The Dilemma | $17.4 | $17.4 |
| 3 | True Grit | $11.2 | $126.4 |
| 4 | The King’s Speech | $9.0 | $44.5 |
| 5 | Black Swan | $8.1 | $72.9 |
| 6 | Little Fockers | $7.1 | $134.2 |
| 7 | Tron Legacy | $5.6 | $156.9 |
| 8 | Yogi Bear | $5.3 | $82.0 |
| 9 | The Fighter | $5.1 | $65.7 |
| 10 | Season Of The Witch | $4.5 | $17.9 |