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Distributors’ apparent reluctance to take on Shutter Island](http://www.cinematical.com/2010/02/19/shutter-island-review/), Martin Scorsese’s venture into genre filmmaking, made for an unusually dead weekend at the box office. Shutter Island’s take, while certainly robust, isn’t the sort of number that would normally strike fear into the heart of studio executives, and I don’t think anyone expected it to do much better than it has; why everyone else made way, therefore, isn’t entirely clear. But Paramount capitalized, and fans of Scorsese’s creepy, beautiful thriller should be pleased. $40 million is a personal best opening weekend for Scorsese, well ahead of the previous #1, The Departed](The Departed (2006) - Movie | Moviefone). Whether it can top The Departed to become Scorsese’s highest-grossing movie remains to be seen, as it obviously won’t have the benefit of the fabled “Oscar boost,” but $130 million is not out of the question by any means.
Most of the holdovers took a pretty big hit this weekend; even Avatar](http://www.cinematical.com/2009/12/11/avatar-review/) saw its biggest drop-off to date (around 30%). Suffering the most were Valentine’s Day](http://www.cinematical.com/2010/02/12/review-valentines-day/) and (http://www.cinematical.com/2010/02/22/weekend-box-office-hollywood-makes-way-for-scorsese/)