Tops at the Box Office: 'Contraband' steals #1 away from 'Beauty and the Beast'

1. Contraband- $24.1M
Color me shocked. Mark Wahlberg proved his box office muscle by showing his muscles in this highly regarded, but rather generic looking heist flick. It's actually much better than that, although the marketing didn't do it any favors, so it comes as a surprise that it managed to best Disney's Beauty and the Beast. Analysts expected Contraband, which features an unknown director at the helm, to bring in around $20M, so obviously Universal must be very happy with this number. They've pretty much already made up the production budget, and considering the weakness of the January slate, Contraband may hang around for awhile. 

2. Beauty and the Beast 3D- $18.5M
Disney continues to clean up by doing nothing, as their re-release of 21 year old Beauty and the Beast added another $18M to it's already impressive $396M worldwide total from 1991.
3. Mission: Impossible-Ghost Protocol- $11.5M/$186.7M
4. Joyful Noise-$11.3M
Joyful Noise was mighty silent as it failed to attract much of the audience it was clearly aiming for, those people who love Glee and have no idea what a Sister Act is. When you're losing out to a genre flick that's been in theaters for a month and a half, something has gone terribly off key. Could it be that...*gasp*...Dolly Parton isn't the box office draw she was back in 1989? Shocker.
5. Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows- $8.4M/$170M
6.The Devil Inside- $7.9M/$46.2M
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice.......shame on...well, audiences weren't fooled again by Paramount's crappy exorcism flick. Last week's champion didn't just slip, it crashed and burned by dropping more than 70%. It was to be expected, as exit polling showed that people liked the film about as much as they like irritable bowel syndrome. 
7. The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo- $6.8M/$88M
It'll creep it's way up to $100M domestic, which is better than I expected. Most interesting to me is the continued lackluster performance in the foreign market, where Sony execs expect it to clear $200M by the end of it's run. Doubtful at this point.
8. Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked- $5.8M/$118.7M
9. War Horse- $5.6M/$65.7M
10. The Iron Lady- $5.4M/$5.9M
Continuing it's slow roll out by adding an additional 797 theaters, Meryl Streep's Margaret Thatcher biopic is showing some impressive numbers. If it holds until Oscar time, when the actress will almost certainly receive a nomination, look for this to be a solid performer overall.