The Underworld Awakening movie,stands fourth in the vampires-vs.-werewolves action-horror franchise,as creatures of the night arose with a vengeance, won the weekend box-office battle at North American theaters with $25.4 million, according to preliminary studio estimates. Red Tails, George Lucas’s tribute to the black Tuskegee Airmen in World War II, flew high with $19.1 million to finish second. Steven Soderbergh’s Haywire, starring Mixed Martial Arts pinup Gina Carano, in fifth place with $9 million, behind the $10.5 million earned by the post-9/11 family drama Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close. All totaled, the box office was muscular: a 32% increase over the same weekend last year.
The Underworld series enjoyed its next-best opening, after the $26.9 million earned by the second installment, Underworld: Evolution, in 2006. Awakening marked the return of premiere vampeuse Kate Beckinsale, absent in the 2009 prequel Rise of the Lycans. To celebrate her comeback, the movie went to 3-D and IMAX, whose premium prices accounted for 59% of the take. The film also earned a toothsome $13.4 million in 36 foreign markets, for a $38.78 million first-weekend global gross. Each of the previous Underworld entries took in about $100 million worldwide.

The Tuskegee pilots, who braved racial prejudice to help the U.S. win the war against Hitler, had been the subjects of an acclaimed HBO film, The Tuskegee Airmen, in 1995 and at least five documentaries. Lucas has said he tried for 23 years to interest studios in the story, finally financing and marketing the movie himself, with 20th Century-Fox distributing. Industry handicappers had predicted a weekend gross of $9 million to $11 million, but Lucas, luring hordes of schoolteachers and their pupils into Fri. matinee showings, registered a strong $6 million that opening day.

Extremely Loud, starring Tom Hanks, Sandra Bullock and Thomas Horn as a boy whose father died in the World Trade Center attacks, was originally touted as a top Oscar contender. Critics didn’t warm up to it, and the film earned less than $1 million in four weeks of very limited release. Its expansion this week to 2,630 theaters, though, augurs well for an honorable box-office run. Attracting an older crowd , EL&IC pulled a lofty A-minus grade from moviegoers polled by the market research firm CinemaScore. That rating was in line with the good vibes of consumers who saw Underworld Awakening and Red Tails.

The audience’s good will evaporated with Haywire, which garnered an abysmal D-plus rating. The spectacle of Carano, the MMA star, beating up on the likes of Channing Tatum, Ewan McGregor and Michael Fassbender attracted a young crowd but not a large one, and most of those who saw it wished they hadn’t. The movie’s first-weekend tally was closer to those of Soderbergh’s indie-style efforts than to his mainstream crowd-pleasers. Call Haywire a technical knock-out—not by the movie but of it.

One picture hopes to display its killer punch on Oscar Night, Feb. 26: The Artist. After eight weeks in limited release, this virtually wordless evocation of Hollywood’s silent-film era finally got to A Theater Near You—and You didn’t care. Expanding from 216 screens to 662, the movie grossed a quiet $2.4 million, for a $3,579 per-screen average. Compare this with The Artist‘s presumed main competition for Best Picture, The Descendants, which in Dec. broke into 574 theaters and earned $4.8 million, or $8,344 per screen.Stars George Clooney, and The Artist stars two French folks who are virtually unknown in the States.The Artist remains the Academy Award front-runner: last night it picked up the top prize from the Producer Guild of America, a leading indicator for the Best Picture Oscar. But Academy voters may want to hand their super statuette to a movie America loves as much as they do. It would help The Artist‘s Oscar chances is some real people paid to see it.

This weekend’s top-grossing pictures in North American theaters, as reported by Box Office Mojo:

* Underworld Awakening, $25.4 million, first weekend
* Red Tails, $19.1 million, first weekend
* Contraband, $12.1 million; $46.1 million, second week
* Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close, $10.5 million; $11.2 million, fifth week
* Haywire, $9 million, first weekend
* Beauty and the Beast, $8.6 million; $33.4 million, second week of rerelease
* Joyful Noise, $6.1 million; $21.9 million, second week
* Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, $5.5 million; $197.3 million, sixth week
* Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows, $4.8 million; $178.6 million, sixth week
* The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, $3.75 million; $94.8 million, fifth week