This article is from the archive of our partner 
.
Welcome to the Box Office Report, where Mark Wahlberg will survive the apocalypse, probably.
1. Lone Survivor (Universal): $38.5 million in 2,875 theaters
The best takeaway from Lone Survivor's weekend domination is the redemption of Peter Berg and Taylor Kitsch, as Buzzfeed's Adam B. Vary points out here. The two shared one of 2012 biggest bombs, Battleship, and nearly tanked their promising feature film careers. Berg and Kitsch previously worked together on Friday Night Lights, the wonderful television show about a high school football team in the fictional Dillon, Texas, before moving to the big pictures. Coupled with a John Carter from Mars-level disaster, Kitsch's movie career was looking ill. The pair needed a successful weekend. With or without the assist from Mark Whalberg — a win is a win.
But besides all of that, Lone Survivor had the second best January opening of all time, after 2008's Cloverfield. Unsurprisingly, as The Hollywood Reporter explains, the film played best in flyover stats, like Texas, and suffered in places like, say, Canada. Lone Survivor is now the best post-9/11 war movie, passing last year's Zero Dark Thirty, which also debuted in January.
