Friday Box Office – Ben Affleck’s THE TOWN Has a Big $8.3 Million Debut

With a string of recent dramas – both good and bad – underperforming at 2010’s box office, you can color me happily surprised to find Warner Brother’s The Town easily topping Friday’s box office estimates. Ben Affleck’s second feature film as director matched great reviews with a tireless promotion schedule and took in an estimated $8.3 million from its 2,861 locations. Already well above projections, The Town is now on track to make $25 million by Sunday. Meanwhile, the two films that were supposed to battle for number one – Sony’s Easy A and Universal’s Devil – came up a little short despite their demo-skewing PG-13 pedigrees. Easy A brought in an estimated $6.8 million while Devil seems to have inspired only limited devotion at number three with $4.9 million. In hindsight, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to place producer M Night Shyamalan’s name so prominently in the film’s advertising? Lionsgate’s low budget, animated Alpha & Omega closes out Friday’s top five with $2.3 million. Details and the weekend’s top ten back here tomorrow.