Box office: 'The Roommate' easily wins a quiet weekend

This weekend will not go down as one of the more impressive ones in box-office history. The makers of "The Roommate" probably don't much care.

The "Single White Female"-ish thriller grossed an estimated $15.6 million to win the weekend race by a pretty good margin. The movie's three-day take pretty well covers its entire production budget, so its return on investment promises to be pretty high.

Overall, the box office is pretty weak thanks to bad weather in much of the country and the Super Bowl projected to keep people at home Sunday. It's down a good amount compared to the same weekend last year. Based on studio estimates all the movies in release will take in about $90 million, compared to $125 million on this weekend last year, when "Dear John" ($30.5 million) dethroned "Avatar" from the top spot.

This weekend's second-place finisher was "Sanctum," the James Cameron-produced movie about extreme cave divers. It made $9.2 million, more or less in line with what box-office pundits were predicting. "No Strings Attached" fell one spot from last week to third place but showed that it has pretty decent legs; its estimated $8.4 million take was down only 37 percent from last weekend. "The King's Speech" did the best of the Oscar contenders, finishing fourth with $8.3 million.

The weekend's top 10 movies:

1. "The Roommate," $15.6 million
2. "Sanctum," $9.2 million
3. "No Strings Attached," $8.4 million
4. "The King's Speech," $8.3 million
5. "The Green Hornet," $6.1 million
6. "The Rite," $5.65 million
7. "The Mechanic," $5.4 million
8. "True Grit," $4.75 million
9. "The Dilemma," $3.45 million
10. "Black Swan," $3.4 million