Zombieland triumphed at the box office this weekend (review here), with a weekend gross of $25M, higher than both expectations, and its budget of $23.5M. Director Ruben Fleischer was at pains to avoid comparisons with Shaun of the Dead, so he'll be happy to know that his weekend take is almost double that of Shaun's entire US run ($13.54M, worldwide gross $30.03M), though the UK production was made for the equivalent of a paltry $4M. Zak Snyder's Dawn of the Dead remake keeps its title of "Highest Opening Weekend for a Zombie Movie. Ever.", with $26.72M.
Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs held on well in its third week, with $16.70M, down 33% for a total of $82.39M, and the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D double bill paid dividends for Pixar with $12.50M in 1,745 theaters. Ricky Gervais comes in a creditable fourth with The Invention of Lying ($7.34M), despite a trailer that completely avoids mentioning the main theme of the film for fear of offending religious folk, and advertising which amusingly knocks 10 years and 20 pounds off his usual, delightfully lived-in, visage.
Surrogates failed to revive in fifth place, with a 50% drop at $7.34M, its two week total of $26.38M, a long way from the $80M budget - it would be good to see Jonathon Mostow buck this disappointing run of big budget fare (U-571, Terminator 3), and return to the form of his excellent Duel simulacrum, Breakdown (1997)
Michael Moore's new (last?) documentary Capitalism: A Love Story did well (but not Fahrenheit 9/11 well) with $4.85M, while Fame, at #8, The Informant!, Love Happens, and Tyler Perry' I Can Do Bad All By Myself all continued to decline, as did Pandorum, which received better reviews that Surrogates, but fell 56.5% to #12, with $1.92, for a two week total of $7.81M, well shy of its $40M budget.
Paranormal Activity (review here) appears at #19, with a weekend income of $535,000 in 33 cinemas, an average per-cinema take of $16,212, twice that of Zombieland, and only beaten out by the $42,000 average taken by the Coen brothers new film A Serious Man in just six screens (total $252,000).
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