‘The Secret in Their Eyes’ is a foreign-language hit

“The Secret in Their Eyes” has turned into a secret box-office success.

Winner of the best foreign-language film Academy Award this year, the Argentine murder-mystery has sold a total of $4.5-million worth of tickets in the U.S. and Canada so far.

That’s about what “The Karate Kid” made in a few hours, of course, but it’s more than four of the last five Oscar winners in that category had grossed after the same number of weeks in theaters. Only the 2007 hit “The Lives of Others” did better.

Most remarkably, receipts for “The Secret in Their Eyes” dropped a minuscule 6% this weekend, a sign of very good word-of-mouth. It took in an estimated $375,222 at 162 theaters.

As distributor Sony Pictures Classics has slowly added screens for the movie over the last eight weeks, its grosses have never dropped more than 13%. Five out of eight weekends, in fact, they have grown.

—Ben Fritz