Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Hollywood.com. Where available, latest international numbers are also included. Final domestic figures will be released Monday.

1. “Contraband,” $24 million ($1.5 million international).

2. “Beauty and the Beast,” $18.5 million.

3. “Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol,” $11.5 million ($16.8 million international).

4. “Joyful Noise,” $11.3 million.

5. “Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows,” $8.4 million ($27.4 million international).

6. “The Devil Inside,” $7.9 million.

7. “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo,” $6.8 million ($16.5 million international).

8. “Alvin and the Chipmunks: Chipwrecked,” $5.8 million ($14.4 million international).

9. “War Horse,” $5.6 million ($8.5 million international).

10. “The Iron Lady,” $5.3 million ($3.4 million international).

Source.

Set in New Orleans, Contraband is Mark Whalberg’s new thriller about smuggling on container ships. He plays a blue-collar family man who’s sworn off his former life of crime, until his brother-in-law botches a drug deal and needs his help in order to repay the debt. Whalberg agrees to do one last job, running contraband from Panama on a container ship. Kate Beckinsale plays Whalberg’s wife, Ben Foster his best friend and business partner, and Giovanni Ribisi plays a New Orleans drug runner who is barely recognizable and eerily convincing.

I recently sat down with Foster in New York and we talked about the role he was initially courted for, the time he got kicked out of acting class, as well as his new production company. Hit the jump for the full interview.

Question: I know you were approached to play Kate Beckinsale’s younger brother, Mark Whalberg’s brother in law, who botches the drug deal, and that you thought the part was too young. Did they think about making the brother role older?

Ben Foster: It was nice that Balt [Director Baltasar Kormakur] and Mark wanted to see if there was a fit, so that’s a compliment, but I read the script and responded immediately to the potential of Sebastian, as something I could do something with.

Was that a role then became expanded?

Foster: It wasn’t enlarged, but it was humanized a little bit. The relationship was built where it wasn’t that way in the original script as much. So we prepped by speaking with Mark and saying ‘Ok this isn’t just a business associate, make it family’. That was very important to me, that it should feel like family.

Read the rest of this entry »

Source.

Ben Foster stars in the new action suspense drama Contraband.

The film, which also stars Mark Wahlberg, Kate Beckinsale, and Giovanni Ribisi, tells the captivating story of Chris Farraday (Mark Wahlberg), a former smuggler who has to go on one final mission to protect his family from a drug lord (Giovanni Ribisi), who’s coming to collect a debt.

Ben Foster who plays Sebastian Abney a recovering alcholic and best friend of Farraday, who knows how to smuggle like the best of them. While Farraday heads to Panama, Foster helps his friend from a far.

We sat down with Foster to discuss his role in the movie, and much more. Check out our interview below.

Global Grind: First off congratulations on the movie, we really enjoyed it. I’m curious when you read the script, because with a movie like this, you want to be able to watch it and you want to try to figure out what they do in the end, but you don’t want to know, you want to be surprised, and I was surprised by how it kind of wrapped up. I’m curious when you first read the script did you see the end coming? What did you think?

Ben Foster: I’m trying to remember, I didn’t see the original film. Mark called up and said he had an interesting script, that maybe we would play together and read it and spoke with Balthazar about the role of Sebastian. They had originally called me in to play the kid at the beginning, and I was like I’m not 12 anymore guys. Life is happening, but Sebastian was curious and it was written a little more straightforward to the end result of the picture and was excited to work with Mark and Balt in developing a character that is a little less streamlined.

Your character seems to be the only one that isn’t fighting for his family rep. At the start it seems like he is more after a typical American dream, a better job, house he has control over, and access to a family. Can you talk about creating that character with a foreign director, especially if you elevated a lot out of the original movie?

His goals are well set. The American dream is one. He is living beyond his American dream and that is important to us to show a man who needs to be liked by everyone. He needs to be present to the world as an American and that he is successful and powerful, meanwhile his internal structure is falling apart. Working with Balt on that, I don’t think it takes a brain surgeon to figure out the metaphors there. He is a very smart fella and he is game to adapt and go more in a direction that is with those themes, but interweaved with family. And the family being, Marks character, Mark’s family and more importantly how do we humanize somebody who does things we don’t necessarily agree with? And the dorian is how we’ve all let our loved ones down. we’ve all let ourselves down and done things that maybe we wish we hadn’t and then approaching it that way rather than values that hold true to on how we treat our loved ones.

Read the rest of this entry »

There’s no way around it, Ben Foster is uncommonly intimidating in person. He speaks low and slow, his hand stroking his chin, his eyes scanning the window. I somewhat nervously sat down with him right before the holidays to discuss his increasingly multifaceted film career, as well as his humble Disney Channel origins.

I see you’re smoking American Spirits.

I don’t smoke, they’re just props.

I don’t believe that.

I’m quitting.

Yeah? How’s that working out?

It’s going good.

American Spirits, that’s a long-lasting cigarette. That’s like a 45 minute smoke. Everyone else is back inside and you’re still out there.

It’s really something you can savor.

Read the rest of this entry »

Ben Foster slept rough on the mean streets of Los Angeles for two weeks to get into character as a homeless police informer for new film Rampart.
The super-serious actor spent months growing a scraggly beard and picked up a wardrobe from a charity store before taking his cardboard sleeping mat to L.A.’s notorious Skid Row.

He tells WENN, “Just living in those clothes helped me, getting my stink in it. It was a great exercise in empathy and being present because everyone is reduced to, ‘Well, there’s no roof here,’ if you’re not getting into the shelter that night and it’s raining. I was trading cigarettes for Fig Newtons.

“It’s tough at night. There’s violence there but there’s also a beautiful community that tries to take care of their own. You have families sleeping next to families.
“I went out with a piece of cardboard, a knapsack and my wardrobe – bare bones. I was sleeping head to feet along the buildings and I took my experience back to (director) Oren (Moverman) and some things felt right. Like a journalist, you bring it (to) your editor/director and hope they don’t cut the s**t out of it and they honour what you brought them.”

Source.

Ben Foster arrives at LAX airport on January 6th, 2012 on Los Angeles, CA.

view more images from this album