A week after snagging Golden Globes for best drama and best actor in a drama, "The Descendants" cleared the $50 million benchmark.
Alexander Payne's R-rated movie was up 17 percent over last weekend, taking $2.45 million. That put the Fox Searchlight movie, now in its 10th week in release, at $51.3 million since its release.
Golden Globes gave a boost to a number of winners, including "The Iron Lady," "The Artist" and "A Separation."
Considering "The Descendants" was shown at 560 locations this weekend — 100 fewer than last weekend — the performance is especially impressive.
Its per-location average was $4,375.
"The Golden Globes had a lot to do with it," Sheila DeLoach, Fox Searchlight's executive VP distribution, told TheWrap Sunday afternoon.
She noted that "The Descendants" is Fox Searchlight's sixth highest-grossing movie ever. The 2006 film "Little Miss Sunshine" is No. 5, with $59 million — a figure "The Descendants" is all but certain to beat.
Fox Searchlight plans to expand the movie to 1,500 locations this Friday.
The movie, which earned George Clooney the best actor Golden Globe, is about a land baron in Hawaii who reconnects with his daughters after his wife, who has been cheating on him, is badly injured in a boating accident.
Also read: AARP's Best Movie for Grownups? 'The Descendants'
A Golden Globe win also helped The Weinstein Company's "The Iron Lady."
The PG-13-rated biopic of Margaret Thatcher, the former prime minister of Britain, spent its second weekend in a row as the No. 10 movie in America this weekend. It is the only specialty film in the top 10.
The movie grossed $3.7 million — a 32 percent drop from last week, when it took $5.4 million.
"That's a very solid hold — especially when you have pictures coming into the marketplace like 'Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close' going wide and the successes of 'Underworld' and 'Red Tails,'" Erik Lomis, The Weinstein Company's head of distribution, told TheWrap Sunday morning. "The Golden Globes definitely helped."
"Iron Lady" now has grossed a total of $12.6 million.
Weinstein's other Golden Globe winner, "The Artist," took $2.4 million in its ninth week of release.
The movie, which won Golden Globes for best motion picture — comedy or musical, best actor in a comedy or musical and best score, is widely considered an Oscar contender.
Also read: Review: Meryl Streep's 'Iron Lady' Is Margaret Thatcher as King Lear With a Wink
It has now grossed $12.1 million.
But it is a tough movie to market. It is black-and-white and silent. And it only is showing in 662 locations — up from 446 last weekend.
Lomis said he plans to slowly expand the number of theaters showing the movie.
"We still have not broken it out wide yet," Lomis said.
For now, it is playing mostly in upscale theaters and arthouses.
"My Week With Marilyn," another Weinstein Company movie that won a Golden Globe — this one for Michelle Williams' portrayal of Marilyn Monroe, saw its gross drop 33 percent from last week. Now in its ninth week, the R-rated "Marilyn" took 318,000.
"A Separation," Iranian director Asghar Farhad's drama that won the best foreign-language Golden Globe, expanded from six to 13 locations in its fourth weekend in release, and took in a striking $182,577. That's an average of $14,044.
The movie now has taken $554,800.
Among other specialty films, the Weinsteins' "Coriolanus" debuted in nine locations to $60,000 — an acceptable but unspectacular per-location average of $6,667.
The movie, starring Gerard Butler and directed by Ralph Fiennes, is based on the Shakespeare play and spent a week in theaters in December to qualify for Academy Awards.
Finally, Focus Features' Cold War espionage drama "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy" took $1.8 million in its seventh week of release. It now has grossed $18.4 million.