A weekend that usually sees pre-Halloween openings for horror and supernatural movies (Max Payne in '08, 30 Days of Night in '07, The Prestige in '06) saw the box office up 39% year-on-year, thanks to strong business for new and widening releases.
Despite some baffled reviews that intimated it might struggle to find an audience, Spike Jonze's Where the Wild Things Are hit the #1 spot with $32.47M this weekend, on 5,000 screens (budget is around $100M). Box Office Mojo reports Warner Brothers' stats that the audience was 43% 18 years plus, 12% 12-17 year olds, 27% parents with kids under 12, and 16% under 12s.
The #2 spot was taken by the Gerard Butler/Jaimie Foxx thriller Law Abiding Citizen, with $21.25M (on a budget of $50M), which is less that the $27.60M taken by The Ugly Truth, and just under the $21.78M pulled in by Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life (2003), making it Butler's fourth highest opening (300 took $70.88M in its first weekend and is proving a hard act to follow).
The big story continues to be Paranormal Activity which, as promised, opened wide this weekend, though still on a modest 1,250 screens at 760 sites, pulling in $20.16M, for a four week total of $33.71. The fact that the per-screen averages at $26,530 is over three times that of Wild Things, means this one should hold strong through Halloween, and easily top $50M (a nice return on that reported $15,000 investment).
Couples Retreat retreated to #4, leaving this week's only other genre release The Stepfather to limp into fifth place with $12.30M, its $20M budget means an inevitable profit, but hopefully this less than stellar opening from the team behind Prom Night means they will rethink their strategy of remaking R-rated 80s horrors in PG-13 versions.
Zombieland officially became the most successful zombie movie of all time, with $7.8M, for a 17 day total of $60.82M, ahead of Dawn of the Dead (2004), Pet Cemetery (1989), Resident Evils Apocalypse (2004) and Extinction (2007), 28 Weeks Later (2007), Creepshow (1982), and Land of the Dead (2005).
Friday sees the release of Astro Boy, Cirque du Freak: The Vampire's Assistant, The Nightmare Before Christmas 3-D reissue, Ong Bak 2, and the inevitable Saw VI.
UPDATE: Actual figures show that Wild Things was underestimated (actual figure is $32.69M) and Paranormal Activity overestimated (actual: $19.67M), as were The Stepfather ($11.58M), and Zombieland ($7.61M).
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