Box office

YOUR WEAKEND BOX OFFICE: Moviegoers were seeing red this weekend, as a pair of films starring Jessica Chastain—the debuting horror flick Mama from Universal and Sony/Columbia’s Oscar-nominated Zero Dark Thirty—took the top two spots in the competition. Chastain, who picked up a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Drama a week ago, is currently starring on Broadway in The Heiress. But we digress. Mama earned $28.1 million, topping the $17.6 million earned by Kathryn Bigelow’s critically acclaimed Zero Dark Thirty, which is looking like a hit as well. Four other Oscar-nominated movies landed in the Top 10: #3 Silver Linings Playbook (TWC, $11.4m), #7 Django Unchained (TWC, $8.2m), #8 Les Miz (Universal, $7.8m) and #9 The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, ($6.4m). The weekend also had its share of stiffs, all in the action arena: WB’s Gangster Squad, (#4, $9.1m in week two), Fox’s Mark Wahlberg-starring Broken City (#5, $9m) and Lions Gate’s Arnold Schwarzenegger comeback vehicle The Last Stand, (#10, $6.3m). The data is incomplete because this is a holiday weekend, and most of the box office bean counters won’t post their totals until today’s receipts come in. (1/21a)