Weekend Box Office: December 2 - 4

Courtesy of Box Office Mojo:

1.  The Twilight Saga:  Breaking Dawn Part 1 - $16.9 million

2.  The Muppets - $11.2 million

3.  Hugo - $7.6 million

4.  Arthur Christmas - $7.3 million

5.  Happy Feet Two - $6 million

6.  Jack and Jill - $5.5 million

7.  The Descendants - $5.2 million

8.  Immortals - $4.23 million

9.  Tower Heist - $4.1 million

10.  Puss in Boots - $3 million

Seriously, America?  Twilight is #1 again? 

While the weekend after the Thanksgiving holiday weekend is usually one of the slowest box office weekends of the year, this one was paticularly embarrassing as Breaking Dawn emerged as the winner, making it the first of the Twilight films to hold the top spot for three weekends in a row.  Ugh, enough already with this crappy franchise.

Adding to the humiliation was watching The Muppets, which is currently one the best-reviewed films of the year on Rotten Tomatoes and the best thing to happen to the Muppets in decades, mysteriously plummet 62% to earn just $11.2 million for the weekend.  Analysts had this one making about $20 million this weekend, which I didn't see happening, but this drop was just ugly.  Maybe everyone who took their kids to see this last weekend made time for Arthur Christmas this weekend, since that only dropped only 39% to earn $7.3 million, a decent rebound from it's mediocre opening last week, but still...The Muppets is too good to just fade away so quickly.

Martin Scorsese's excellent Hugo, which was just named best picture of the year by the National Board of Review, did nicely after adding 563 more theaters and earning an estimated $7.6 million this weekend.  Fellow Oscar contender The Descendants also added theaters had another great weekend, earning $5.2 million, while The Artist earned another $206,000 from the whopping six theaters it's currently playing in.  Also opening in just 10 theaters this weekend was Shame, starring Michael Fassbender, which earned an excellent $361,000 - especially excellent since it opened with an NC-17 rating.

Next weekend, the annoyingly-advertisted New Year's Eve arrives to hopefully snatch away Twilight's main audience, as well as Jonah Hill's Adventures In Babysitting-clone, The Sitter.  Gary Oldman takes another shot as an Oscar hopeful as Tinker, Tailor, Solider Spy opens in theaters.

Plus...The Muppets is still playing, so go see it if you haven't yet.  Or see it again, if you have.  How about we let Fozzie Bear explain why it's imperative that we don't let the Muppets fade away again?

How can you argue with that?