Which Locals Won the Thanksgiving Box Office Bonanza?

If gorging yourself on your Thanksgiving meal made you feel heavy, chances are at least your wallet feels lighter. In addition to shelling out for Turkey Day groceries and falling prey to the Black Friday/Small Business Saturday/Cyber Monday corridor, many of you sprung for movie tickets for your families, too. This was actually the highest grossing Thanksgiving weekend for the movie business ever, with multiplexes raking in $288 million overall.

So, did any locals bring home a slice of that sweet box office pie?

Sadly, we didn’t crack the top spots. Those went to The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 ($43 million), Skyfall ($36 million), Lincoln ($25 million), and the animated Rise of the Guardians ($24 million).

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Look a little deeper into that top ten, though, and you’ll find the homegrown talent. Larchmont’s Ang Lee had his Life of Pi hit the No. 5 spot, and Mamaroneck native David O. Russell and his Silver Linings Playbook reached No. 9.

Though Playbook has a slight edge to Pi when it came to critic reviews, in terms of box office, these numbers might seem like a big win for Lee. And it is. After all, his movie made $22 million, meaning he actually got people to go to see a starless film about a guy trapped on a lifeboat with a Bengal tiger. (What, no explosions?)

But, even though Lee’s movie made more—Russell’s Silver Linings Playbook only brought in $5 million—it was available on more screens. Life of Pi was on nearly 3,000 screens, while Silver Linings Playbook was only on 367. That gives Pi a per-screen average of around $7,600, while Playbook‘s was more like $12,600.

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Then again, Playbook had the advantage of some recognizable actors, including perennial favorite Robert DeNiro, former People Sexiest Man Alive Bradley Cooper, and current It Girl Jennifer Lawrence. So comparing the two box-office hauls is like apples and oranges. Let’s just call them both winners.