It has been a bit of a flat weekend in terms of box-office Stateside as the whole of North America awaits the arrival of a certain British spy, but the big news from across the pond is that Ben Affleck’s ARGO beat the mighty CLOUD ATLAS to the top spot after two weeks of being stuck at the number two position.
CLOUD ATLAS, the huge-budgeted opus which is directed by Andy and Lana Wachowski and Tom Tykwer, only managed the number three position in its first week out there. HOTEL TRANSYLVANIA, the animated Halloween fare, hit the number two spot, earning $9.5 million compared to CLOUD ATLAS’s $9.4 million haul. ARGO smashed both of them after two-plus weeks of good word-of-mouth pulling in a respectable $12.4 million considering that it is in its third weekend out there. However, it has the lowest amount of cash taken for a film at the number one spot this year, other than that taken by THE POSSESSION, which took $9.3 million back in September. Its total haul is over $60 million, so I don’t believe that Warner Brothers will be moaning too much.
Outside of the top three, but only just, is the horror jump-fest PARANORMAL ACTIVITY 4, which added another $8.6 million to its US take, and also TAKEN 2 which stuck another $8 million to its massive total, which now stands at over $117 million in the US alone.
There was huge expectations for another opener in the US and Canada this weekend, and that was SILENT HILL: REVELATION, which only scored $8 million (it was expected to be this weekend’s number one movie) and the joint number five spot on this weekend’s chart.
The other new entries this week were the Halloween adventure FUN SIZE, which took just over $4 million, bagging the number ten spot, and the surfing drama CHASING MAVERICKS starring Gerard Butker and Elizabeth Shue, which scored $2.2 million over three days and the number 12 spot along with it.
For our friends in the US and Canada, next week sees the release of WRECK-IT-RALPH, the ensemble gaming-themed animation adventure, RZA’s directorial debut THE MAN WITH THE IRON FISTS and Denzel Washington action vehicle FLIGHT.
For the full weekend box-office chart, head on over to Box-Office Mojo for the full estimates.
Source: Box-Office Mojo
