Brad Pitt’s ‘Killing Them Softly’ flops, ‘Twilight: Breaking Dawn - Part 2’ wins slow box office

The post-Thanksgiving weekend was slow at the box office as expected, with holdovers like The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2 and Skyfall still at the top. Brad Pitt’s new film, the crime drama Killing Them Softly, flopped, earning poor reviews from moviegoers.

Breaking Dawn 2 needed just $17.4 million to win the box office, dropping 60 percent from the holiday weekend. It’s now up to $254.6 million after just three weeks, notes Entertainment Weekly. The final Twilight film is actually doing better than Breaking Dawn 1 at the moment. That film made $246.9 million after three weeks and grossed $281.3 million domestically by the end of its run.

The latest James Bond film, Skyfall, came in a close second with $17 million, just a 54 percent drop from last weekend. It is already the highest-grossing Bond film in the US, making a stunning $246 million domestically. Skyfall’s international total - $896 million - also makes it the highest-grossing Bond film of all time worldwide.

The rest of the Top 5 included more holdovers. Lincoln and Dreamworks Animation’s Rise of the Guardians both added $13.5 million, while Ang Lee’s Life of Pi made $12 million.

Killing Them Softly was a big disappointment for The Weinstein Company, which thought that Pitt in a gangster movie was a good reason to give the film a wide release. However, it grossed just $7 million.

“We're disappointed, and there's no getting around that,” TWC’s Erik Lomis told The Los Angeles Times. “We thought it was deserving of a wide release because it was Brad Pitt in a gangster movie.”

The film earned an F CinemaScore from audiences, who might have expected something different from a film starring Pitt. It is also the worst wide-release of Pitt’s career since his movie career started, when 1994’s The Favor made just $1.5 million.

The horror film The Collection also failed, grossing just $3.4 million. Its predecessor, The Collector, grossed $3.6 million in its first weekend in 2009.

image: TWC