Corona | Coming Attractions

Warner Bros. took a gamble and gave director Spike Jonze two-and-a-half years to make his vision of Where the Wild Things Are. The studio and the filmmaker have been rewarded by audiences who bought $32.4 million dollars worth of tickets in the film's opening weekend, making it the new number one film in the land.

While Wild Things didn't come close to breaking any record for the biggest October opening ever (that's still held by Scary Movie 3 with $48 million), the film will likely earn its $100 million dollar production budget back domestically and recoup its production and advertising costs quicker than what could have been expected. The movie is enjoying mostly positive reviews and is appealing to children and grown-ups who are familiar with Maurice Sendak's classic book, so it should have a healthy run as alternative Halloween programming for the next two to three weeks.

In second spot is Law Abiding Citizen, Overture Films' thriller starring Jamie Foxx and Gerard Butler. It also had a nice opening with $21.2 million in ticket sales. However, this week's real superstar is the wide release of Paranormal Activity; Paramount just bumped that picture's release up 600 screens and they got a huge $20.1 million dollar result -- that's over $26K per screen. Made for only $15,000, Paranormal Activity's phenomenal success is going to go into the record books for sure. The only question remaining is how much will the film end its theatrical run with. As I predicted last week, I'm guessing somewhere between $40 to $50 million dollars domestic.

Last week's #1 movie, Couples Retreat, tumbled to fourth place with another $17.9m added to its now $63.3, total. Screen Gems' remake of The Stepfather, starring Nip/Tuck's Dylan Walsh, opened to a tune of $12.3 while Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs is now in sixth place overall and has $108 million dollars total from five weekends of showings. Zombieland has another $7.8m (total $60.8m) in #7 spot, the Toy Story/Toy Story 2 3D double feature earned an additional $3 million (total $28.5m) and Surrogates grossed an additional $1.9m (total $36.3m). In tenth place is Ricky Gervais' The Invention of Lying which, with another $1.9m this week, brings its total up to just $15.4m. Maybe if the movie hadn't been meddled with in its production phase it would be performing healthier, but that's just my post-mortem opinion. I'm a movie webmaster, not a doctor Jim!