Weekend Box Office

UNDERWORLD FENDS OFF RED TAILS: Screen Gems’ latest installment of the Kate Beckinsale-starring Underworld: Awakening, the fourth of the series, but first in 3D, raked in $25 million to lead the weekend’s box office tally. The movie, showing on 3,078 screens, pulled in a per-theater average of $8,252. The big surprise, though, was Fox’s George Lucas-produced Red Tails, the true story of African-American fighter pilots during World War II, whose all-black cast inspired an impressive outpouring from the community, racking up $19 million, with a $7,604 per screen haul. Universal’s Mark Wahlberg-produced Contraband, last week’s #1, added another $12 million to its total of $46 million for third place, while Warner Bros.’ 9/11 drama, Extremely Loud & Incredible Close, based on the book by Jonathan Safran Foer, scored $10.5 million in its first week going wide, beating out Relativity’s debuting Steven Soderbergh martial arts movie, Haywire, with $9 million and a per-screen average of $3,690. (1/23p)