Friday Box-Office: Thanksgiving Weekend is Looking Strong, Topped by 'Twilight' and 'Skyfall'

What a massive three-day weekend and five-day weekend as the Thanksgiving holiday is certainly proving to be a good time at the movies and why wouldn’t it be? Some of the best movies of the year are in theaters right now. Even the Twilight movie is the most entertaining installment in the woebegone franchise.

Speaking of Twilight, The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn – Part 2 is going to enjoy its second weekend at the top of the box-office as it pulled in an estimated $17.4 million on Friday after $13.3 million on Wednesday and another $8.3 million on Thursday. It’s three-day total will probably be in the $43 million range as it looks to cross $225 million domestically overall. The three-day result will be about a 69% drop, but after a massive $141 million opening that is to be expected.

In second is Skyfall, which is just tearing up the box-office taking in another $14.7 million on Friday and it will likely approach $35 million for the weekend as its domestic cumulative total approaches $220 million and it is obviously not slowing down too much.

Moving down to fourth and fifth place on Friday is where we find the first of the week’s newcomers, both of which opened wide and in 3-D on Wednesday.

In fourth is Dreamworks’ animated Rise of the Guardians and depending on how you look at these two films they can either be perceived as disappointing or improving. With Rise it opened to $4.8 million on Wednesday, dipped on Thursday to $3.7 million and then came back on Friday with $9.2 million. To go along with that, it received an “A” CinemaScore, which should help it along the way, but the competition is certainly steep at the moment and it will need to get family audiences talking.

Next we have Ang Lee’s Life of Pi, which opened on Wednesday with $3.6 million and brought in $4.5 million on Thursday, leading up to a solid $8.8 million on Friday on way to a $20+ million weekend with an “A-” CinemaScore to help ensure a positive word of mouth along with the continually increasing box-office dollars. One thing I was wondering about is whether or not church groups would gather to go see the film, which makes me think Sunday may give this one a boost for the weekend. We’ll see.

Another newcomer this week was FilmDistrict’s awful Red Dawn and the fact this movie is bringing in any money should be perceived as a victory, but given its $65 million budget I’m sure there are some people paying its success some serious attention. With $6 million on Friday after $4.2 million and $3 million on Wednesday and Thursday respectively to go along with a “B” CinemaScore it never ceases to amaze me what people will pay good money to see when the likes of Skyfall, Lincoln, Pi, Rise, Wreck-It Ralph and Argo are in theaters at the same time.

Speaking of other good movies in theaters, Silver Linings Playbook is now in 367 theaters and cracking the top ten, however, it’s per theater average remains rather low unfortunately as it brought in $1.6 million on Friday for a $4,359 per theater average. That needs to be much higher if it’s going to break out once it goes wide.

Otherwise, the Friday top ten is directly below (via Deadline) and I’ll be back tomorrow morning with a complete wrap-up.