The Danny Boyle-directed endurance-test starring Franco as Aron Ralston, the real-life hiker who famously amputated an arm in order to free himself from a boulder, opened at four theaters in New York and Los Angeles, where it sold out its Friday and Saturday night shows, grossed $265,925 overall and averaged $66,481—or more than five times what Megamind did (at thousands and thousands more theaters, natch). So far this year, only The Kids Are All Right has debuted to a bigger per-screen average.
127 Hours' success made the debut of fellow Oscar buzz film Fair Game look relatively pedestrian. The Naomi Watts-Sean Penn drama about the Valerie Plame-CIA leak grossed $700,000 at 46 theaters (for a per-screen average that, yes, was also bigger than Megamind's, but not nearly as showy as 127 Hours').
