The Insider.com

The first mainstream NC-17 film to be released in years, Michael Fassbender's Shame, was the most eventful box office development during the second slowest week of 2011. Despite some of the most popular theater chains refusing to carry the explicit drama, Shame scored the week's highest per-theater average ($361,181 from six theaters in Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco for an average of $36,118).

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Other Oscar hopefuls performed admirably as well, with Martin Scorsese's Hugo pulling in $7.6 million and moving up to number three the same week it was named Best Movie of the Year by the National Board of Review.

The top two slots remained unchanged with Disney's The Muppets adding another $11.2 to its haul, bringing the two week total to $56.1 million while The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 1 held the top slot for the third straight week, earning $16.9 million, bumping it up to $247.3 million.

Despite earning better reviews, Breaking Dawn is slightly lagging behind New Moon, which had earned $255.4 million by the same point in 2009. Still, that's a champagne problem.

The rest of the Top 10 broke down like this:
#4. Arthur Christmas, $7.4 million
#5. Happy Feet 2, $6 million
#6. Jack and Jill, $5.5 million
#7. The Descendants, #5.2 million
#8. Immortals, $4.4 million
#9. Tower Heist, $4.1 million
#10. Puss in Boots, $3.1 million