Weekend Box Office: Chronicle Works Its Powers Super Bowl Weekend

Does the Super Bowl affect ticket sales? The answer, of course, is yes. In fact, there's a decent chance Budweiser spends more on advertsing that Sunday than America does in theaters. While Sunday does tend to be the lowest money maker of any three day weekend, Super Bowl Sunday is usually (and predictably) one of the lowest Sundays of the year. After all, how could anything Hollywood cranks out compare to watching commercials featuring dogs barking out themes from Star Wars?

For the first time this year top ten sales for a single weekend day dropped below $23 million. Estimates put the number at $15 million for Super Bowl Sunday, 2012. If that sounds low, compare it with last year when the top ten took in just $10 million. Of course, the number one movie that weekend was yawn-fest "thriller" The Roommate. This year audiences had slightly better fare to choose from.

Chronicle, with its found-footage edginess and ever-teasing marketing campaign, landed the number one spot with $22 million, just edging out post-Harry Potter Daniel Radcliffe's period mystery-thriller The Woman in Black, which nabbed the number two spot with $21 million. The third new entry, Drew Barrymore's based-on-a-true-story enviro-flick Big Miracle whale-flopped into fourth place with just $8 million.

For the full football-flattened weekend top ten, check out the chart below:

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1.Chronicle (2012) *$22,000,000Total: $22,000,000LW: N WR: 1
THTRS: 2,907
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2.The Woman in Black *$21,000,000Total: $21,000,000LW: N WR: 1
THTRS: 2,855
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3.The Grey$9,500,000Total: $34,756,000LW: 1 WR: 2
THTRS: 3,208
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4.Big Miracle *$8,500,000Total: $8,500,000LW: N WR: 1
THTRS: 2,129
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5.Underworld Awakening$5,600,000Total: $54,353,000LW: 2 WR: 3
THTRS: 2,636
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6.One For the Money$5,250,000Total: $19,668,000LW: 3 WR: 2
THTRS: 2,737
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7.Red Tails$5,000,000Total: $41,323,000LW: 4 WR: 3
THTRS: 2,347
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8.The Descendants$4,600,000Total: $65,523,000LW: 8 WR: 12
THTRS: 2,038
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9.Man on a Ledge$4,500,000Total: $14,700,000LW: 5 WR: 2
THTRS: 2,998
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10.Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close$3,925,000Total: $26,793,000LW: 6 WR: 7
THTRS: 2,505