Weekend Box Office:
1) The Final Destination $12.4 million
2) All About Steve $11.2 million
3) Inglourious Basterds $10.8 million
4) Gamer $9 million
5) District 9 $7 million
6) Halloween II $5.6 million
7) Julie & Julia $5.2 million
8) G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra $5.1 million
9) The Time Traveler's Wife $4.2 million
10) Extract $4.1 million
The highest grossing summer in box office history came to an end this holiday weekend, not with a whimper or a bang, but with a modest cull that was neither surprising nor disappointing. For the second week in a row, Warner Brothers' fourth installment of their popular Death franchise The Final Destination, directed by David R. Ellis, came in first with $12.4 million. With the film continuing to do so well in 3D, we can certainly expect that this won't be the "final" installment of this long running horror series. The film has made $47.5 million to date, with even more coin to be added after this Labor Day weekend calls it a close.
The Sandra Bullock comedy All About Steve debuted in second place, giving the actress her second substantial hit of the year. The film pulled in an estimated $11.2 million over the course of the weekend, though it was welcomed with a lukewarm reception. This week's other new comers didn't fare quite as well. Gamer, Neveldine and Taylor's second high-octane action film of the year, this one starring Gerard Butler, failed to muster up much attention. It arrived in fourth place with $9 million. Though, the worst opening in recent history goes to Mike Judge's Extract, which opened at number ten with just $4.1 million. This bodes well for Judge's track record. His films usually flounder and flop at the box office, but go onto become huge cult successes that rack up quite a bit of dough on the home video circuit. I doubt this is the last we'll here from this Jason Bateman comedy.
The only art house film to open this week was Cherien Dabis' dramatic comedy Amreeka. The film managed to garner the highest per screen average, taking in an estimated $50,000 at just 4 screens. That's an average of $12,500 per theater. If Amreeka had been given the 3,121 screens that Final Destination held down this week, it would have pulled in $39 million to be the highest grossing film of Labor Day weekend.
Next weekend will see a host of new films including 9, Whiteout, Sorority Row, and Tyler Perry's I Can Do Bad All by Myself. It's a pretty easy call that Tyler Perry will own this coming weekend.